


amity // dh+pl // rewritten version

by thattumblrchick



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-03
Updated: 2019-01-22
Packaged: 2019-04-18 02:15:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 26
Words: 46,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14202870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thattumblrchick/pseuds/thattumblrchick
Summary: Hello! This is the edited and rewritten version of a fic I started about a year ago with the same name.- - -For as long as he could remember, Dan Howell has had a personality more fragile than the flowers he pressed. After meeting Phil Lester- an explosion of a human being living in an explosion of a house- he learns that life should make you feel more than just complacency.(shyxpunk)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Updates will be once every 10 days or so. Enjoy, and make sure you let me know what you think!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Dan runs into some bad luck and a pretty boy.

-dan-

I often wondered which planet most adults grew up on. There was no freaking way that it was earth. 

I was staring up at Damien Sedcole- an enormous crocodile disguised as a twelfth grader- while I reflected on my guidance counsellors words from earlier that morning.

“Be more social.” Mr Northey had said, as usual. “It really isn’t that hard, you know. Just give it a try.”

I had to wonder if he genuinely believed that a kid like me could just spontaneously decide to make friends, or if he knew that he was talking bullshit. I imagined following his advice, and asking Damien if he wanted to be my friend. 

Then I imagined the part where he ripped my limbs off. 

“Fuck, are you deaf or something?” Damien asked, shoving me back a step. 

I shook my head, looked at the floor. I was grabbing the straps of my backpack so tightly that my fingers were turning white. 

Damien was perhaps my least favourite person in the entire world. It wasn’t just that he was an asshole with pretty blonde hair and green eyes that girls fell in love with- he was also the type of guy who found enjoyment in stomping on literally everything, people included. He fucked with everyone, but I'd had the misfortune of bumping into him in the hallway that morning. 

It probably didn’t help my case that I was half his height and didn’t like football. 

“So, my friend told me that you have a book,” Damien said slowly, menacingly. 

He grabbed my shoulder, and tugged me forward. As he did, I felt my skin rip open, exposing all the vulnerable things inside. I kept staring at the ground, wishing wishing wishing that he’d leave me alone. 

He put a hand under my chin, and tilted it up, so I was forced to look him in the eye. “Would you mind if I had a look, Dan?”

I wanted nothing more in the world than to punch him in the face. 

But people like me didn't do that. No- people like me just took it.

I gritted my teeth, and watched as he tugged my bag from my hands. Nothing I could do to stop him. There were one, two, three seconds, and then he was holding it in his hands. "Recognising Wildflowers, a Complete Guide," he read aloud.

"Give it back," I said quietly, willing my voice not to crack.

"Are you telling me what to do?”

I shook my head frantically, and reached for it again. He was faster than I was, and held it out of my reach. I found his eyes again. "Please," I whispered, feeling my voice break. "Please don't."

Damien held my eyes for a moment, and then his thuggish hands tore through the flimsy book easily, ripping it in half. I watched the pieces flutter to the ground like snow. 

Time seemed to slow down a little after that, but my heart refused to do the same. It was beating and beating and beating and god- I could feel how everything inside was starting to crumble. 

My hands started to shake. My whole body, actually. I couldn't see. I couldn't turn my brain off.

Because he ripped my freaking book. 

"Fuck. Are you actually crying?”

His hands were resting on my shoulders, clamping on tightly. He shoved me back as hard as he could, until my back clattered up against the row of lockers behind me. I felt the wind leaving my chest, a little puff of air just audible. I bit my lip, and felt it tremble slightly.

"Look at me when I'm talking to you, Daniel."

I didn't look.

He slapped my face. Really, really, hard. I could tell that it would bruise. Some more of my precious tears bloomed, spilling over my cheeks.

He laughed a bit, called me a faggot, and then walked away. 

I stood still for a few minutes. My mind was reeling. I leaned back against the locker behind me.

\- - - 

It was raining pretty hard when I left the school, but I couldn’t stay inside after that. I stumbled towards the shiny silver bleachers that surrounded our school's football field, and crawled underneath them. I collapsed onto the ground and leaned up against one of the metal poles.

Even though I was sheltered, the rain was still beating down on me. I tried to keep myself from crying, but it was a losing battle. 

I was such a baby. Such a pathetic baby.

And then I saw him. 

And then my blood ran cold. I was an idiot. Such an idiot. How did I miss him? There was another freaking boy under the bleachers with me. 

He was sitting about ten feet away, leaning up against one of the metal poles, his legs sprawled out in front of him. His eyes were shut. 

It wasn’t Damien, luckily. It was someone else. He had messy black hair, and a ratty leather jacket. 

I was watching him intently- trying to figure out if my eyes weren't workings or if he actually had a nose piercing- when he looked over, and met my eyes. Caught. I held his gaze for about five seconds before I had to look away. He had very ripped jeans. And black hair. And eyes that looked like thunder, except blue. 

I tucked my knees closer to my chest, and buried my head in my hands.

"Y'know, love, even if your eyes are shut, I can still see you just fine."

There was amusement in his voice. I didn’t say anything, I just wiped my eyes off on my sleeve. For some reason, I really didn’t want him to see me crying. When I looked up again, I found him staring. And not like he glanced over accidentally. Like, he was actually staring at me. 

He stood up after that, and I noticed that, like Damien, he was fifteen feet tall. At least. His hair was brushing through clouds as he walked over. 

I wrapped my arms around myself. My palms had started to sweat.

"What's a kid like you doing under here?" He sat down a few feet away. "Aren't people like you- y'know- normally in the library or something?"

I shrugged, and then looked down, showing off the side of my face where Damien had struck me as an explanation. It was already starting to bruise.

“That's gotta hurt," he muttered. "You okay?"

I nodded. He nodded. The whole freaking school nodded. 

His eyes were ice and sapphires and pretty things. And mine were brown. 

"Can you talk?" he asked after a moment. 

I paused. “Yeah.”

“Oh, sorry, right. I’ve just never seen you talk before.” He looked away. “I’m Phil.”

I nodded. It was all I could do. 

"So what's your name?" he asked finally.

I looked back- blanking entirely. He raised his eyebrows at me, a lopsided grin on his face. 

“You look a bit like an Alex to me, or maybe a James- I knew a James once, in ninth grade. He wasn't nearly as cute as you, but we-" 

"Dan," I said, interrupting him. 

"Cute name."

Phil grinned. He was definitely smug. 

The corners of my mouth tugged upwards. I hid my smile under the sleeve of my sweater.

He held his hand out to me, like it was completely ordinary for people like me to shake hands with people like him. 

I paused again, just staring at his fingers. 

"Jeez, kid. I don’t bite, you know.”

When I shook his hand, my skin caught fire. He seemed to radiate electricity. 

“Nice to meet you,” he said. In that moment, his voice was quieter than I would have thought possible for a guy like him. 

“Yeah, you too.”

He scrubbed his hair with his hand, and a piece was flopping into his eyes. We sat quietly for a second, and the air was thick with anticipation. 

"Do you have any friends?" he asked a second later. 

And that's when I knew it was coming. . . All those stupid names. Freak and fag and that kind of thing. 

"Hey. Take it easy, kid," he said gently. "I'm blunt. I know. Sorry."

And all those names didn't come. 

I watched him for a moment, and his face was open. He wasn’t joking around. 

“It's okay," I said. He looked at me, and his eyes matched the sky. "And I don't. Not really."

"Yeah, I know how that one goes," he said. Then he stood up, smiled, ruffled my hair. 

I didn't know what to say. 

He started to walk away, leaving me alone in the rain. 

Before he got out from the bleachers, he turned to face me. "I'll see you around, alright?" 

I shrugged, nodded. 

"No, kid, really. I'll see you." 

And then he was gone. 

And I wondered if he meant it. If he would see me again. If he would be friend-number-one. 

My heart was beating wildly in my chest. 

But then I remembered that he was Phil, a fifteen-foot-tall-terrifying-human-being, and the last person on earth I should be talking to. 

It wasn’t that he was mean or unfriendly- it was quite the opposite. He was charismatic, good at talking, and good at smiling. He was the kind of guy who stole hearts. He plucked them from people's chests as if they were fruit, then he ate them like they meant nothing at all. I didn’t know if my heart could handle that. 

I, unfortunately, had the tendency to fall in love way too quickly with the wrong sorts of people. And Phil freaking Lester, with his miles of legs and leather jacket and black hair and nose ring- he was exactly the type of person I should stay away from. 

It would have been easy, too. If it weren’t for his eyes- the ones I couldn’t get enough of. 

They weren't pretty because of how they looked, though. They were pretty because of how they looked at me.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Phil gets to know a pretty boy a little better.

-phil-

Everywhere I went, people just loved to paint pictures of me in their minds. They changed who I was until I matched up with who they wanted me to be. Maybe that was just what kids did in highschool- or maybe my classmates were assholes. Probably the latter.

And normally, I'd do anything and everything to stay away from them, from the kids made from porcelain and ice instead of skin and bone. But the promise of getting to know Dan- that odd little boy I'd met in the rain- well that was just too good to miss.

It was the first football game of the year, between our school and our rivals, not that I was really keeping track. I had to pay an entire four dollars on entrance, which still seemed rather steep for an over glorified game of fetch. I climbed up the bleachers, and found myself an empty row. I kept myself busy by drumming my fingers on the bench next to me. All around the football field, the stands were packed full of people. They were milling about, all buzzing together with excitement for the coming game. I rolled my eyes, and tugged on my sleeves a bit. Everyone cared so much. Too much.

In all honesty, I didn't know anything about football, and after the first two minutes of waiting, I firmly decided that I'd rather be sitting under the bleachers. Or staying at home. Or going to a party. Or even kissing Sarah Flemming behind the school- because sitting alone before a football game- well, that was no fun at all.

And then, as if someone was listening to my thoughts, I felt a sharp sting on the back of my head. Someone had thrown a rock at me. I spun in my spot, and smiled when I saw the dirty blonde hair and abundance of rings that meant Amelia Swander was there.

"What the fuck did you just throw at me?"

She threw her head back and laughed as she sat down next to me.

"Dunno, Phil." She smiled at me, and fiddled with her flower crown. "Are you imagining things?"

Amelia was one of my best friends. Or my oldest, at any rate. We'd met in the first grade, having been introduced by our equally unbearable mothers. And we were that awkward type of almost-friends that comes about when two kids have moms that are good friends. I'd been to her ballet recitals, and we'd had countless family dinners together. But we were never real friends. And then, in grade eleven, we figured out that the two of us had a surprising amount in common. And then we made a concious effort to become real friends- and since then we were.

Amelia said that she was a hippie born in the wrong generation. I always thought it was just an excuse to get high and buy incense, but she claimed it had to do with more important things- like inner enlightenment and her chakras and other bullshit. She liked to skip class lots- which I assumed was common among not-quite hippies. And she stayed up late at night to pick daisies and weave shitty flower crowns, or write cheesy poetry about love and the stars. She pulled the whole flower child look off fairly well- her face was dusted in freckles, her eyes were very blue, and her hair was always a bit of a mess- a very pretty mess, though. Her loose curls were usually woven with flowers or feathers. Sometimes I thought she'd hatched from an egg when she was little, and had since gone on to grow into a fairy or a bird or something, because there was no way she was entirely human.

Throughout all the years I'd known her, we'd kissed twice. Both times because there was nothing else to do, and nobody else to kiss. Since then we firmly decided to be just friends- with the exception of making one of those shitty pacts to get married if nobody ever fell in love with us.

I got hit with another pebble, this time on the shoulder.

"Seriously- What the fuck was that?"

Amelia started laughing. I stared at her, raising my eyebrows, but she just smiled at me, her eyes twinkling. I punched her in the arm. She stuck out her tongue at me. I spun around yet again to find the real cause of my annoyance- Spencer Tolliday. Very much a pain in my ass, very much my friend.

"Fuck you, man," I said, glaring at him.

"Good to see you, too." He ruffled my hair in passing, and sat down next to Amelia, like usual.

Spencer was another one of those difficult-to-classify people that I'd gotten to know over the last few years. Some kids would call him a stoner, others would call him an idiot, and I called him hilarious.

Spencer was not quite as tall as me, but a good bit heavier. His hair was usually messy- a dark brown colour that matched his eyes. There wasn't much else to say about him, other than that he was almost always smiling, or messing with someone or being sarcastic for some reason or other. He was a person who could always make anyone like him. He could make people laugh.

And beyond all that, he was nice.

If it wasn't for Spencer, I'd still be knee deep in all of the 'cool' people of our school. The ones that had porcelain for skin, and ice for hearts. If it wasn't for Spencer, I never would've swapped my letterman jacket for a leather one.

And since I'd known him, I became surrounded idiots who hung out under stairwells and listened to good music and didn't care if I slept with anyone or not and had actual freaking emotions and didn't talk behind my back.

Spencer took a sip from his can of coke. "Why the fuck are we seeing a football game again?"

Amelia shrugged. "Phil wanted to introduce us to a tenth grader or something."

Spencer ran a hand through his hair. "Yeah, I get that, but why did you have to invite us to a football game?"

"What's wrong with football, dirtbag?" Amelia scoffed.

Spencer made a face, but never answered her question. "Phil, when you say you invited him here, does that mean it's like a date?"

I shook my head. "Fuck. No. Look, I'm just trying to be nice for once."

"I'm glad" Amelia said, leaning on Spencer's shoulder. "It's about time for your aura to shift."

I couldn't tell if she was being sarcastic or not. Spencer rolled his eyes and stole a handful of her popcorn. And he stared at her a bit.

And then I was reminded of how Spencer used to be sad. It was more in the tenth and eleventh grade, though. He worried about all kinds of things. About how he appeared, and how much he ate, and how much he weighed, and how tall he was. And most of all, what other kids thought of him. It got pretty bad, too. He had trouble with eating after awhile- and buying clothes and stuff.

And then he'd had his first class together with Amelia, and that'd gone out the window. She smiled and laughed with him, and it didn't matter to her one freaking bit if he could lift weights or if he combed his hair a certain way. And it definitly didn't matter to her if he was lean or muscualr of fat or whatever. Because she just saw Spencer through it all. And she didn't really let him feel self concious. Since then, the two of them were practically attached at the hip. They never dated, though. I always wished they would.

Spencer stared at Amelia lots. Amelia stared at the sky lots.

I stopped paying attention to the pair. My eyes were tumbling over the crowd of people below us. They were shouting and yelling and stomping, and for a moment I wondered if Dan would dare to enter the crowd at all. I wondered if he'd show up, considering he barely had the courage to tell me what his name was.

Then my eyes caught onto a thin frame and hunched shoulders about ten rows down, and I knew it would be a good night.

I stood up on the bench. "Dan!"

He looked up immediately, his eyes darting back and forth through the crowd. I waved my arms above my head, and his eyes found mine. His expression softened a bit. He made his way towards us very shyly, his left leg pulling slightly behind his right- a limp. It took him a while to make it up to us, during which time Spencer and Amelia promptly shut up.

"Hi," he mumbled, a little breathlessly, when he reached the top.

"Hey, kid," I greeted. Dan looked up at me, and furrowed his brow at the word 'kid'.

He looked almost the same as he had when I saw him a few hours earlier- his hair was still a little curly near the nape of his neck, he had the same baggy hoodie that hung halfway to his knees, and he'd crossed his arms over his torso, his fingers clinging to the fabric, as if that would prevent people from seeing him, like it kept him safe.

He stood there for a moment or two, staring blankly at us, like his mind short circuited. He fiddled with his sleeves, like he didn't know where to look or where to go or where to put his hands. Amelia slid away from me on the bench so that he could sit there, but Dan didn't move. His legs were firmly planted to the ground, like his legs had suddenly grown roots.

I snapped my fingers. "Dan."

Then he blinked a few times, and sat down, as if he'd just realized where he was. His eyes kept darting and his fingers kept tapping, though. I touched the base of his chin, and gently turned his head so he was looking at me instead of the ground. I observed how the small mark on his cheek from earlier had developed into a blue and purple bruise.

"Dan, you know how earlier I said that I wouldn't eat you?" I whispered.

"Yeah."

"They're not gonna eat you either," I said softly.

He nodded, his arms still wrapped firmly around himself. He looked over at the pair- who were still chattering on about something- and I waved at them. "Hey, you two. Listen up," I said. "This is Dan. He'll be joining us tonight, so please don't make asses out of yourselves."

Spencer held his hand out. Dan shook it, but his eyes looked glassy.

"I'm Spencer, and that's Amelia."

Amelia offered Dan a hand too, her nimble fingers glittering under the multitude of rings. She smiled at him- something she was very good at. She looked like she was ripped out of a fairytale, with her flowery hair and flowery dress and flowery eyes. Dan stared at the flowers in her hair instead of her face for a long time. He looked flustered.

I wanted to give him a hug and tell him that they were nice, that they were good people. And I wanted to tell him that he didn't need to worry about them, or me- because everyone here was nice and it would surely be a lovely night. But I also knew that I wasn't being fair. Because I'd seen Dan sitting alone at lunch before, and I'd seen people shove him, and I'd heard the crude whispers before, and never once had I spoken up, not until he was sitting a few feet away, crying his eyes out in the pouring rain. He had a right to be wary. And it made me sick, but he had good reason to be hesitant of befriending me. People- especially in our school- had a tendency to be dirtbags to those who weren't made of porcelain.

Amelia looked over at Dan, her eyes softening. "So, Dan," she said. "What grade are you in?"

"I'm in grade ten," he said, extremely softly. I had to strain to hear his words. "You guys are in grade twelve, right?"

Amelia nodded. Dan went red. His arms tightened, until his knuckles were white.

And then, as if by magic, I was reminded exactly what it was that made me like Amelia and Spencer. Because Dan was staring at the ground, looking like he was drowning in his own skin, and what had taken me full minutes to see under the bleachers, took them only seconds. Right away they noticed how Dan was riddled with holes and gaps where all the people in his life used to be.

And as soon as they noticed, all the kindness in them started spilling over. Spencer softened his voice- even softer than when he spoke to Amelia. He made a few shitty jokes to break the ice between them, but his eyes were warm the whole time. Amelia offered to buy Dan a Pepsi, and after he asked, she let him admire the flowers in her hair. Dan seemed to like flowers. She ended up taking a daisy out of her hair and tucking it behind Dan's ear. He left it there.

When the game actually started, none of us paid attention- not really. Spencer was quite preoccupied trying to throw bits of Amelia's popcorn at his math teacher- Mrs. Bebrin, who was sitting a few rows in front of us- without getting caught. Amelia was laughing, and leaning on his shoulder. Dan threw a piece of Amelia's popcorn, too. But he missed Mrs. Bebrin and ended up hitting a porcelain person in the back of the head. He looked worried for a second, and then he smiled a bit, and threw another piece at them.

It wasn't until about fifteen minutes into the game that we ran out of popcorn to eat and throw that we became aware of the actual game going on. None of us really knew anything about football, but whenever the people around us screamed, we screamed too, and when the people across from us screamed, we shut up. We didn't really mind, though. Because we weren't really there for the football game at all. We were there to show Dan that not all people who went to our school were complete assholes. And I thought it might just be working. Because Dan had started to take up more space as the game went on- he stopped shrinking himself into nothing whenever anyone looked at him.

He leaned up against me as the game progressed, our legs pressing together, and his eyes rapt on the action below. His cheeks were a little rosy, probably from the cold, and I smiled when I saw that for once, his fingers weren't grabbing onto his sleeves for dear life. They were relaxed, and so was he. I seemed to swallow some lightning while I was staring at him. Because I was sitting next to the kid from under the bleachers who had a fucking daisy in his hair.

Under closer inspection, it looked like Dan had been ripped from a fairy tale, too. Even more so than Amelia. His skin was almost as pale as mine, though you couldn't tell, as his cheeks were usually pink. And his eyes- they were kind eyes. They held even more flowers than Amelia's. And his laughter was rare, but it spilled wildly out of him like the blooming of wild roses. And I swallowed some more lightning- or maybe I smiled at him.

Our team scored a touchdown, which I took to be a fairly big deal, since everyone was cheering and clapping and shouting. And through all the noise, I thought I imagined it at first. I thought I'd just heard some stray words lost in the shrieks of victory. Because when he thought I wasn't paying attention, Dan had looked up at me, and whispered, very softly: "Thank you."

I later realized that he had, indeed, whispered to me. I also realized that I wasn't supposed to hear it.

But I did.

And I smiled.

-

"I'm gonna take Amelia home," Spencer announced when the game was done. Amelia was fast asleep as he said this, her head leaning heavily on Spencer's shoulder. He scooped her up into his arms once he was standing- becoming quiet and gentle, careful not to wake the sleeping girl. I noticed that Spencer also had a flower in his hair.

"It was nice meeting you, Dan," Spencer said, his eyes warm again. "I guess I'll see you on Monday."

Dan nodded, and waved goodbye to the two of them as they disappeared into the crowd of people below us. I looked down at Dan, who was busy stretching his arms above his head.

"The two of them- they're kinda cool, right?"

Dan nodded. "I liked them." He pulled his thin sweater tighter around himself. "Sorry that I wasn't the best at socializing with them- it's just, not what I'm used to."

"You did wonderfully."

He smiled at me, and then stood up on his tiptoes, looking into the crowd. He looked so much smaller when we were both standing up- like he might float away if there was a strong enough breeze. It was completely adorable.

He sank back down onto the bench. "I hate crowds," he mumbled after a moment. I looked over at him. He was staring at the mass of people swarming towards the exit. And his hands were gripping his sleeves again. He was drowning in the people around him already- just like he'd been drowning in his own skin before the game started.

"Can I walk you home?" I asked after a second.

Dan looked up at me, considering for a moment. Then he nodded, and smiled. And the porcelain people in the stadium seemed to vanish, and the whole place filled with flower petals and shooting stars, and I grabbed Dan by the hand and lead him down the stairs. I wondered if he could see it too- all the stars and flowers. And then I looked over at him, and by the way he was grinning, he definitly could.

We flew through the crowd, running and shoving people out of our way, our fingers still intertwined. People were giving me looks. And I glared at them and I smiled at Dan. We made it out of there in record time, both breathing heavily, both glowing like we'd swallowed all the lightning in the sky.

He tried to rub the involuntary smile from his lips, and failed. He quickly covered it up with one of his oversized sleeves.

He didn't stop grinning after we left. It was such a difference from under the bleachers. His smiles used to be horribly uncommon, and now they didn't stop. And the one he was wearing- it was a smile so wide it brightened his whole face and it brightened mine and it brightened the night sky, too, making a few stars appear.

"What's got you so happy?"

He looked a bit puzzled, but in a happy way. "When we were running- nobody shoved me, or- or bumped into me, or, or anything," he said softly.

His words tugged at the threads that were attached to my heart. I squeezed his hand.

The sky had gone from the azure blue of the afternoon to a near black, all hints of the sunset long since washed away. But the city lights hid the stars- even the ones Dan had conjured with his smile- and they were all gone. Dan wasn't really talking anymore. We breathed together for a bit before we started walking to his house. We weren't holding hands anymore.

As we wandered farther from the school, the neighbourhood started getting nicer and nicer. It was full of those giant houses that could hold dozens and dozens of people but were usually just for one couple and a fluffy dog. I wondered if Dan lived in one of the mega-houses. I wondered if Dan had a fluffy dog himself.

I shook my head. Because it didn't matter if he had a dog or what kind of house he lived in or if he had rich parents. The only thing that really mattered anymore was that our fingers were horribly far apart since his fingers were gripping his sleeves.

I grabbed his tiny hand and I held it in mine and I swallowed some more lightning that made all of my insides buzz.

Except I didn't actually do that.

Our hands were far apart and so were our minds, it seemed.

Dan lead me towards a medium sized house- his house. Not one of the mega-ones, but it was bigger than anything in my neighbourhood. It was made out of red bricks- old ones- all covered in green ivy.

And then everything spun out of control, because Dan checked his pockets and realized that he didn't have a house key. And he also remembered that his parents were both out seeing some kind of play and wouldn't be home for another half hour. And then Dan stared at the ground, and I could tell from his voice that he was about to cry.

"Hey, kid."

"Yeah?"

"If you promise not to wig out or anything, I can probably get you into your house."

Dan stared at me, his glossy eyes wide again. He was searching my face for an explanation.

And then he nodded his head.

I walked around the back of the house. Their windows were all locked, but one of them looked flimsier than the others. I'd be able to get in without picking the lock. I swallowed some lightning, because I could tell that Dan was already impressed. I pushed and pulled a bit, getting it into the right position- no help needed from my safety pin- then one good shove, and it swung open freely.

"Who's room is this?" I asked.

"Mine." I couldn't read his voice just like I couldn't read his face.

I climbed into the dark room first, then gave him a hand at climbing in, since the window was a little high for his short legs. When he stumbled in, I put my hand on the small of his back to steady him. Lightning.

And then I used the opportunity to look around his room, and I realized that I was surely dreaming.

"Holy fuck," I muttered.

Flowers.

Flowers and flowers and flowers.

They were everywhere.

From the flowers I'd seen in his eyes earlier, and the flower he had in his hair, I could tell he liked them. But I hadn't expected this.

They were everywhere. Pressed flowers in frames hung up all around the room, vases upon vases of them- covering every surface, drying flowers hanging from the ceiling, flowers limp on the large desk, loose petals scattered along the floor. They were everywhere everywhere everywhere.

"Holy fuck."

He looked at me, then at the room (and all the flowers), then at his feet. And his face- I'd never seen a face so red in my life. His hands were shaking a bit, and he wouldn't look at me. He refused to meet my gaze. Dan brushed some of the hair from his eyes- eyes which had started to look a little blurry, like when we were under the bleachers.

He swallowed thickly. "I know it's dorky, and- I, I know that flowers are stupid- stupid stupid stupid, and they're girly- and. It's a babyish room- and it's queer and- and I was meaning to clean some of this up I just-"

"Hey. Dan."

I took a step closer, and put my hands on his shoulders. He looked up at me, his face still very red, and his eyes still shimmering with the promise of tears.

"What's so stupid about flowers?" I asked quietly, raising my eyebrows.

He opened his mouth, then closed it again.

"I happen to think that they're pretty fucking cool," I said, even softer.

He stared at me for a few seconds, judging if I was serious or not. His mouth fell open again, but no words came out. He stared some more. And then he smiled at me- and he didn't stop smiling. Dan never actually said anything, he was busy grinning like an idiot, with little crinkles near his eyes, and dimples deeper than the craters on the moon.

"Thank you," he whispered, for the second time that night.

"It's cool."

I wanted to hug him. Or give him a pat on the head or shoulder or something. People sometimes hugged when they said goodbye on doorsteps, but I had to remind myself that we weren't on a doorstep, we were in his room, since I just broke into his house. So I scratched my neck, instead.

And then I heard the door slam downstairs. Dan's parents were home early. It seemed that I didn't need to break in after all.

"Hey, kid. I'm gonna be off now," I said quietly, as I inched towards the window. "Most parents don't like finding people like me in their house."

I frowned, my mouth tasting bitter. Maybe in a different reality- where I didn't break into my friend's houses or wear leather jackets or have tattoos- I might've stayed over at his place for a bit. But I was stuck in this universe so I climbed back out of his window, and waved to Dan and all his flowers.

I jumped the fence. I turned my back on the great big fairy tale house which contained the fairy tale boy.

But I didn't leave right away. I sat down on the far side of the fence and stretched my legs out in front of me. I closed my eyes. I was thinking about Dan. I spent a minute trying to figure out what it was that I liked about him. Because he was just a boy. And there were countless others just like him that swarmed our school.

But he was the only one that made my insides feel like I was swallowing lightning every other minute.

And then I figured it out.

I liked my friends because they weren't made out of porcelain and ice- they were made of skin and bone. But Dan wasn't even made out of skin and bone. He was something else entirely. Something better. Something very warm and very kind and something I didn't have a name for yet. And even though the sky was dim so there were no shooting stars to see, I wished anyway. I wished that I might see the fairy tale boy again.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Dan learns his lesson.

-dan-

My head was swimming. But not sinking, exactly. It was floating. Gliding. Or flying. Flying through the pink clouds, just like the ones that were at the game. My room suddenly felt a whole lot bigger. I felt a whole lot bigger. Because Phil freaking Lester told me that flowers were cool. And Phil freaking Lester took me to a football game. And Phil freaking Lester had actual freaking friends who could pull all the clouds and the moon and the sun down to the earth if they wanted to and they screamed at football games without liking football and they threw popcorn at math teachers and they wore flowers in their hair.

And they liked me. That was the strange part.

Which was funny, because my life was very stuck for a long time. The only constant being that I was stepped on by most people. And then Phil freaking Lester took one look at me, under those bleachers in the rain, and then he hit the play button on my life, just like that. And then everything was spinning out of control- in the very best way. After being on pause for so long, my life was moving so quickly quickly quickly. And I was left flying, trying to get used to the idea of not being pinned to the ground.

It was late at night. Very late. I should have been sleeping. But I was far too busy to sleep, since my head started to float up, until it was definitely not on my body anymore. Because Phil- he was tall and funny and cool, and he had a leather jacket that was scuffed-up and worn in, and his shoulders were broad and his jaw was sharp and his eyes were blue and his lips were pink-

Pause. Stop. Slow down slow down slow down slow down slow down.

I shook my head a few times. I shook out the thoughts that were making my heart claw at my chest like it had come alive. Because I'd seen him kissing girls before. I'd seen him making out with them in the backs of classrooms and outside the school and under stairwells, like it was all he ever did. So I pulled out a roll of extra-strong Do-Not-Cross tape, and I wrapped my heart up with it, so that it wouldn't be tempted to leap from my chest whenever I saw him.

Phil freaking Lester was off freaking limits.

But I already knew that it was pointless. All I had to do was think of his smile- a smile so pretty and powerful that human beings should not be allowed to possess it- and then I was a complete goner. All the ground would fall away from under my feet. And then I would start to fall off the edge of the earth. Falling falling falling all because of his stupid smile.

I put up another line of tape- this one much thicker than the first. I also stood up some big flashing signs between the two of us that read danger and keep out, but it was futile. I didn't really have any choice over liking boys instead of girls, so why would I be able to choose which boy I became obsessed with.

I closed my eyes again, staring very intently at all the danger danger danger signs inside of me, trying as hard as I could to stop thinking of him. But then my heart laughed at my brain because it knew that I would fall. I would be forever obsessed with both boys and flowers.

-

My heart ended up being right. I never did stop thinking. I thought all Friday night, and all Saturday morning, and all Saturday afternoon, until my mum knocked on my door and told me that if I didn't come for dinner right that second, she'd drag me out of my room by my feet.

My mum was a nice one- a rare adult that retained some her teenager-ish qualities, like watching scary movies and climbing apple trees. She understood, for the most part, what it was like to be confused and worried and things, and she also knew me better than I knew myself.

That night, however, I felt trapped at the table. I didn't want to be talking about whatever it was my mom was babbling on about- meditation, probably- I wanted to be locked in my room writing down word for word everything the four of us spoke about at the football game so that I'd never forget any of it.

"What's turned your head into a balloon?"

I looked up. She was smiling a little, the kind of smile that meant she knew exactly what was going on. I stared back at my food.

"Nothing," I mumbled.

It wasn't nothing. It was Phil freaking Lester that turned my head into a balloon.

"Okay, better question: who was it that turned your head into a balloon?" she said, as she brushed some of her hair from her eyes. She was smiling more.

"Nobody."

I prayed that my cheeks weren't as red as they felt.

She stared at me for a second, and then her eyes went wide with realization. "You met someone today... that's why you stayed late after school, right?" she guessed. "Is that why you're so happy? Do you have a crush? Did you meet any cute girls? Or any cute boys?"

I glared at her, but I knew that my face was betraying me, and I could tell that once again, she could see right through my cheap lie. The worst part was how she kept on stubbornly glancing at me every three seconds with that stupid I'm-your-mum-so-I-know-everything face.

"C'mon, Dan. At least give me a hint. Are they in your grade?"

"Mum."

She nodded thoughtfully. "Oh, I see. They're older than you, aren't they."

"Mum."

I took my plate back to the sink, not in the mood for the interrogation to continue. Because whenever she asked me about it, that made it very real. It made my obsession a very tangible thing. And my problem was that I wasn't so sure that anything actually happened between up. Yeah, sure, some scary kid saw me crying and then invited me to a football game. That was for sure. But everything else? It was quite possibly my imagination.

Who said that he was staring at me and making me laugh and leaning on me? That was probably my head grabbing a hopeful situation and spinning it up to the point of lies.

And then Phil Lester, Phil freaking Lester, he proved my heart right. Because as soon as I got back to my room, I saw it. Taped to the outside of my window, there was a daisy and a scrap of paper. It was a note. And they were from him.

kid.

it occurred to me that i never caught what type of music you like, and on the off chance you like good music, i thought i'd invite you over to my place tomorrow. me and some friends are listening to the smiths latest album (the queen is dead), and it'd be cool if you could come. my house is the one on poppy street with the ugly lawn and a turquoise car in the drive. be there at 11am (or be square).

-phil

I read the note once.

Twice. Three times. Four times. Five times.

Thirteen times.

Seven million times. At least. I lost count.

I pinched myself on the arm a few times. It was real. I pinched myself again. Definitely awake. I turned it over in my fingers, examining it closely. It was written on a torn scrap of paper, the back of which had some unanswered math problems on it. He wrote in blue pen, and had very bad handwriting. And he thought that it would be cool if I came to listen to music with him.

I wasn't really into music, honestly. I didn't have a record player and I hadn't heard of any of the bands that he and Amelia and Spencer had been discussing on Friday. I had heard of Phil freaking Lester, though, and I decided that anything he listened to would probably be very good and very cool.

-

The next day, on the walk over, my legs turned into jello.

Once again, my heart and brain were battling it out on if this was a good idea or not.

My brain pointed out that it was raining so hard that it looked like the sky was falling, and Phil's house was in the kind of neighbourhood where people got stabbed with axes on a regular basis. But my heart ignored it and argued that I had a large red umbrella which would protect me both from ax murderers and the rain.

Phil's house didn't end up being that hard to find. The harder part was finding the courage to actually knock on the door. I stood there for nearly a minute, debating and debating and debating. My heart won eventually, and I was met with the blue eyes I'd been imagining none stop for the last thirty-six hours. They were real.

But they weren't as bright as before.

Phil- he didn't look as happy as he had at the game. The dark circles under his eyes were a million times darker. And his expression- it was also a bit darker- it was like the storm clouds from outside had blown their way into his brain.

And he looked at me. He was staring straight at me, and made no move at all to let me into his house. He was just watching me. His mind seemed to be in a far away place, but that was fine, since it let me hold his gaze without being caught.

"Dan, you've got very lovely eyes," he commented after a moment, like it was nothing. Like it was something you just said. "Come on in."

I think I grew a few thousand feet, right then and there. I was towering over the house and the city and the county and the whole wide world because Phil freaking Lester had complemented my freaking eyes and I was both growing and melting all at once.

I followed him into his house, and he lead me straight downstairs into his basement, where I sat down on the floor, next to Amelia. Spencer was lying on Phil's ugly brown couch behind us, and I couldn't tell if he was unconscious or sleeping or just laying there. Phil went out to get drinks, and I noticed that Amelia didn't have any flowers in her hair, which I thought was a shame, because they looked quite nice last time.

Amelia smiled at me when I sat down, and she was holding a huge bowl of popcorn. I helped myself to a handful and then smiled back at her.

"Is popcorn the only food you eat?" I asked after a second.

Amelia laughed. Spencer did, too (apparently he wasn't dead).

"Popcorn is the only thing that she eats," Spencer said, to which Amelia threw a piece at his head. He rolled onto his side and laughed some more.

"Shut up, Spencer."

"Make me."

"Maybe I will."

And then more laughter. And then more staring. And then more smiles.

I felt a bit awkward after that. Like I was intruding on something that was a very private matter. Like they were just about to kiss or something. I wondered if Amelia and Spencer were dating. And then I thought about asking them, and then I thought about all the ways it could go wrong, so I kept my mouth shut.

"Would you two get a room?"

I looked up. Phil had walked back in, and was very busy rolling his eyes.

Amelia leaned over to me. "Don't mind Phil today. Sara Bennet insulted him at a party last night after he tried to kiss her. And now his ego is a little bruised, so he's being a dick to feel like more of a man."

Phil scowled at Amelia and sat down next to me. "My ego isn't bruised, thank you very much. There was some, you know, confusion between me and Sara, that's all."

Sara. Who the fuck was Sara?

Not that I cared at all. Because I was busy listening to the danger danger danger signs in my head and I wasn't interested in Phil in the least.

But really, who was she? Were they dating? Did he like her? Did she go to our school?

Phil leaned into me as he reached for Amelia's popcorn. I swear, we were so close that I could've heard his thoughts if I tried hard enough. I leaned my head onto Phil's shoulder. He didn't seem to mind.

The conversation rolled onto the band that I was apparently there to listen to (The Smiths). They were Spencer's all time favourite band, and Phil's third favourite band. Amelia didn't voice her opinion, she was busy eating popcorn. So was I.

"How long are we waiting for him to show up?" Spencer asked as he propped himself on an elbow. "He was supposed to get here like twenty minutes ago."

Amelia rolled her eyes. "You can lay off, Spencer. He'll get here."

Spencer went pink and looked away.

I wondered if perhaps they weren't dating after all.

We only ended up waiting another minute or two before the door upstairs opened. Amelia looked at Spencer with a little I-told-you-so smirk. He stuck his tongue out at her.

"Alright. I'm here. Yes, I'm late. No, I don't care," the person shouted from up the stairs.

Phil's face broke into a grin- the first one I'd seen all day. My skin turned green. Or maybe I was just annoyed because the person who'd just opened the door could him smile with one sentence and I couldn't.

"So, you showed up," Phil shouted, standing up and leaving me alone on the ground. "I thought you were far too cool for us freaks, y'know, after you skipped the football game to try and kiss Rosie Gural."

And the person- who was coming down the stairs- laughed.

It was a familiar laugh. A very familiar laugh. And then I saw the very familiar person that went along with it.

The familiar blonde hair that was lighter than Amelia's, but only went down to their jaw. And the familiar green eyes that were full of nothing but venom and ice. And the familiar beautiful face that made me want to punch them even more, because it wasn't fair that someone could be attractive and an asshole.

Damien.

Damien Damien Damien Damien Damien Damien Damien Damien Damien Damien.

He was all I could see and all I could hear and all I could feel and all I could think.

And then he saw Phil and his eyes lit up and they did that revolting 'bro hug' thing. And then he waved at Spencer, who waved back, and Amelia, who also waved back. And then his eyes found mine and he stared at me.

I shrank into myself and into the carpet and into the center of the earth where I caught fire and died.

"Oh my god. You guys brought Dan here? You got the actual faggot himself? This is too fucking good." He laughed a bit and slapped Phil on the shoulder.

And then it started to click.

It started to crush me.

It was a trick.

Phil didn't like me.

Phil liked laughing at me. And so did everyone else. Spencer and Amelia and Damien and probably a hundred other people.

It wasn't real. Any of it. I was awake, but it was a dream. It was all a big fat dream. And my imagination- it was really quite cruel. Phil wasn't flirting with me, or trying to spend time with me, and he didn't even pity me. There was nothing. Just the cold glare of a group of people laughing at me. Laughing at the freak. And god, had I ever fallen for it. I'd tumbled head over heels into the trap they'd set for me. The bleachers. The football game. My bedroom. The note. All of it.

And I didn't look into Phil's eyes, because I could already tell that they wouldn't be full of lightning anymore. Now they'd be full of that stupid hyena laughter that Damien had mastered so well.

And I all I could do was watch, as Phil became a flower-killer before my very eyes.

All of the hope and light I felt for the human race the night before had evaporated. He didn't think flowers were cool. He didn't think I was cool. And he most definitely didn't think that my eyes were lovely.

I stood up and I punched Damien in the face. Except I didn't do that. I couldn't do that. I was just staring at him and feeling my life end. I disappeared after that. I vanished from existence. The magical energy of the football game was gone. Because I'd turned back into a simple daisy, drowning in the thick carpet of Phil's basement, where I'd just been invited to be humiliated in front of the people I used to think were my fresh start.

I left. I didn't say a word, and I didn't hear any words either. My ears were roaring.

Someone was calling me. It was Phil. And Amelia was grabbing my arm but I couldn't hear and I couldn't feel and all I could see was the image replaying and replaying in my head of Phil and Damien hugging like they were best friends.

I really wanted it to be a dream. I wanted it to be fake. Phil had that way about him. The way he could spool fire from his tongue like it was nothing, and make everybody listen to his and everybody love him no matter what he said. Because if he said something they didn't like, he'd just flash that stupid stupid smile at them, and they'd forget.

And I could say everything. I could use up all the words and all the letters in the world and they still wouldn't look my way. Everyone would see through me. I'd still be lost in the back of the room, being stepped on by all the flower-killers that towered above my head.

It wasn't fair. Out of all the people in the world, he just had to talk to me, and it just had to be fake.

The worst part was how completely I'd fallen for it. Phil was an asshole. And the evidence was in front of me. I'd seen him get in fights with people before. I'd seen him beat up Elliot Meyers and Robbie Oakwood. And I'd seen him shout at people in the hallways. And I'd seen the bruises on his hands.

I ran and ran out of that house, because hindsight tastes bitter in your mouth. And I was no longer full of light. I was full of the sour taste of metal. And being in the same house as him, on the same street as him, in the same country as him, that made it hurt more.

It was my fault. I just couldn't stop believing the lies that sounded the prettiest. I should have listened to the warning tape and the warning signs, because Phil freaking Lester really was a danger.

I felt my throat tighten up. My eyes were burning. But I didn't want to cry. Those idiots, they wouldn't get the satisfaction of stealing any of my tears. They were mine, and I wouldn't let them spill for a stupid, stupid, boy who could make me blush.

It hurt too much to think about, after that. It was like all my emotions, my thoughts, my feelings- they were just words. Words scrawled on pages that were floating around my head. So I gathered all the pages up. I swept them off the floor, and pulled them from the air. I stacked them up, and tucked them into files and binders. I put everything into a closet in the back of my mind, somewhere I didn't visit often.

Then I took out a key, and I locked the closet door. And then all those awful words, all those awful emotions, they were gone.

The outside air was colder than I remembered. Where there used to be the warmth of his eyes now there was just the cold of his laughter. I let the rain wash over me. It helped to make me numb.

Numb.

It was often the only thing that remained in my head after I cleaned up all the emotion-papers from in my head. But numb wasn't bad. It was a soft feeling. A little empty, a little detached. But it felt nicer than crying. And it felt much nicer than admitting that Phil had already made such an impact on my life that my heart had crumpled up into a little piece of paper without him.

I closed my eyes. And the world became quiet for a moment. It was like the entire universe was numb too. The wind and the rain were beating down, but other than that, everything was still. Something told me that even they were indifferent, too. Everything was numb. Everything.

When it rains, you use an umbrella. But when your heart starts to cry? There's no logical solution to that.

I thought about the last time my heart was crying. That was when my grandfather died. I couldn't really remember how I dealt with it, though. I kind of just dissolved into fog for a few months. But this time I wasn't dissolving at all. This time my heart was demanding to be felt.

He- my grandfather- once told me that everyone had a flower growing in them, and that flower was who they were. Almost like their soul, but not quite. For me, I was filled with daisies. For my grandfather, he had one great big sunflower. And for Phil, he was full of those little pink ones outside the library that I'd loved when I was little.

"Monotypic genus lamprocapnos," I whispered. "More commonly known as the bleeding hearts."

Because that was what Phil was. And what he meant to me. He was a great big bleeding heart- my bleeding heart- that he didn't care about one bit.

"Dan!"

I opened my eyes. My mother, it seemed, wasn't numb in the slightest.

It was still raining very hard. It also seemed that I was lying on the ground in my front yard. I didn't remember lying down. Or walking home.

That was funny.

I thought about it some more.

It wasn't really that funny.

"Dan," she fretted. "You're soaking wet. Come in, love. I don't want you to get sick."

She pulled me up, and hugged me. I pushed her away after a second. I started bubbling with a poor excuse.

"I'm sorry. I didn't- I didn't mean to- to, you know, lie down- I just-"

My mom just shook her head and gave me another hug. We went back inside, and she made me mint tea. We discussed if ghosts were real and if I was seeing things.

-

The next day was particularly shitty. I had to go to school, and I had to dissect a fish in science, and I had to keep thinking about all the people I didn't want to. But I took a big sip of hope after every class, wishing wishing wishing that my day might look up.

Hope hope hope hope hope. It was the one little thing that was getting me by. Maybe my mom would buy me some flowers when I got home. Maybe my dad would tell me how proud he was that I got into the advanced grade 12 math class. Maybe I would take a walk in the woods outside my house and I wouldn't run into anybody who didn't like me.

And then it occured to me that I wasn't drinking hope anymore, I was drinking stupidity.

And then the whole world ended, because Phil freaking Lester was standing in my path.

I wondered, when did he become ninety-thousand feet tall? Because he was towering right in front of me, his body creating an enormous road block. His expression was still very cloudy.

I knew I couldn't pass him, and I certainly couldn't talk to him, so I ran. I turned on my heel and sprinted away from him, ducking thorough the people in the hallway, not caring anymore if I bumped into anyone.

Phil was running after me.

He was shouting my name, just like he did when I was at his place. I ignored him. He caught my wrist. I spun to face him, and he looked even scarier than before. I swallowed.

"Dan. Can we talk for a second?" he said. I stared at the new bruise that was on his cheekbone.

I tugged my arm out of his grip. "No, we can't."

"Dan. Please."

"Phil. No."

And for once I was on the receiving end of his famous glare. The one that withered hearts and made people crumple in on themselves. And when he used it on me, my heart stopped beating. It looked like he hated me and everything about me and then I knew I wasn't dreaming.

"What the fuck is your problem? Dan. I just want to talk," he said, stepping closer.

My eyes hardened. And I was filled up with some strange variety of courage- courage that I'd never felt before- it was running through my veins and suddenly my mouth wasn't connected to my brain anymore, and I was yelling at him.

"You are my problem, dirtbag. I thought that I might've actually mattered to you, just a little. But I guess it was an act, right? You are a fucking flower-killer. And God, I just- ihateyouihateyouihateyou!"

Phil's eyes flashed. He took a step closer, and all I could see was how there was no doubt in my mind that he stepped on flowers and odd boys alike.

He grabbed my hand for the second time, his nails biting into my wrist. "Dan. Fucking listen to me-"

I ripped my hand out from his, more roughly than the first time. "Fuck you, Phil freaking Lester! Fuck you!"

He took a step forward. I took a step back. My legs had started to shake again, like my hands. But my mouth wouldn't stop talking and I couldn't do anything. "Fuck- I don't need to listen to you anymore because you disgust me and I hate you."

Phil's hands started to shake right along with mine. But this wasn't because he was scared, it was because he was trying not to punch me. And I knew that if I didn't want to get killed, I should shut up. But I just couldn't make my mouth stop talking. I wanted to grab all the words in the room, and eat them all up again, but they were all spilling and spilling and spilling and all I could do was watch.

"I'm over you, Phil freaking Lester. The only thing you've got going for you is that you have sex with lots of fucking girls. That's it. No personallity, no intelligence, no future. And very soon the rest of the world will realize that you're a loser too, and the pretty girls won't even want you anymore. And you will become absolutly nothing. Nothing nothing nothing-"

Phil looked so scary that I stopped taking. My voice just stopped with no warning. I also stopped breathing. Phil's hands were shaking again, and his breathing had become choppy and ragged. He looked up at me, and his eyes were so blue and so angry and so filled with storms that my heart stopped, too.

"You know what, Dan freaking Howell? Fuck you too."

Then he exploded, and lunged forwards. He was quicker than the lightning in his eyes, but this time it was the really bad type of lightning. The angry kind. He put his right hand on my chest, and slammed me up against the row of lockers behind me. He was exploding. Exploding exploding exploding. Like a star at the end of its life.

And he was just like Damien. He really was a flower-killer.

His right hand was pressing on my chest really hard- pinning me there. And his index finger was resting on my collar bone. His hand was hot. It was burning, scalding, boiling. I could feel the anger and hurt and hate rippling off of him.

Time started to spill forwards after that, faster than anything I'd seen before. I watched the rest of my life go by. All of it. It started with Phil ripping my limbs off. And then stabbing me in the chest. And then trying to find my heart- to crush it- only to find that it wasn't in my chest anymore because nothing was in my chest anymore because I was both dead and heartbroken.

I looked up at him.

He dropped his head, and looked at the floor, but kept me pinned there. His hand had cooled down a few degrees- like he was trying trying trying to stop exploding, just like I'd been trying trying trying to stop talking.

"Dan."

His voice was shaking.

"I don't want to- to do this. Not to you. Never to you. I don't. I just want to talk- I need to talk- I need to explain."

I shook my head and started to squirm against Phil's hand, but it didn't budge. I wriggled and tried to push him off and I tried to disappear into nothing and I tried to teleport into another dimension, far far away from Phil.

I eventually shoved my way forwards, until I wasn't up against the lockers anymore. But then Phil grabbed me again- both of his hands were gripping my shoulders- and he pushed me right back until my shoulder blades met the cold metal behind me.

I shrank into nothing. He grew into everything.

His eyes were blazing again, and his hands were made of lava and lightning and fire and they were burning me. I couldn't look away. He was angry. Angry like sparks and storms and the sea and the stars. I wondered softly to myself, how on earth he still managed to look so pretty. And I also wondered where the bruise on his face had come from. I wondered if he got it stepping on someone. I wondered if he'd get another one when he stepped on me.

And then I tried to remind myself how I didn't want to cry, but it was too late for that. I was crying. Hard. Harder than with Damien. I found his eyes again, and this time I didn't bother to disguise how my voice was shaking or how my tears were falling.

"I'm scared of you. I don't want to talk to you. Please let me go," I whispered.

Phil stared at me for a long time. And his hands weren't burning me anymore. They were normal. And his eyes weren't on fire anymore. They were just blue. A dull and empty blue with no traces of fire or life left. His hands slid off my shoulders, but he placed them on either side of my head, so that I couldn't leave.

I looked away, and he didn't. He was just staring at me. Infuriatingly so. Almost hungrily. I felt more pinned by his gaze than I ever had been by his arms. I felt like he could see through me. Like my skin went all clear and he could see all the bits and pieces in my head.

"Please let me go," I repeated. "And please, just- just don't hurt me."

He stared at me some more, his body frozen like a statue. He looked very sad. All the mad and angry and scary was long gone from him. Everything was gone. All the smugness and the attitude and the confidence and the power was gone, too.

He just stared at me. With a little bit of sad and a little bit of something that I didn't understand. I didn't think that he was really there anymore. He'd crawled back inside himself, nothing but the blue of his eyes left.

He smiled. Very sadly. He nodded a bit, and he laughed. Nothing was funny. And he looked at the ground.

"You've got such lovely eyes," he said.

He walked away from me after that.

Nothing else to say.

No words left.

I'd said them all.

As he walked, he seemed to shrink a bit. He crumpled up- crumpled in on himself- like I did when I felt like nothing at all. Somehow, his wonderfully lanky walk- the one that always made it look like he could do or say anything- now it was nothing. Now, where he used to have keys he had nothing but locks.

His hands were shoved in the pockets of his jacket, but I knew that if I touched them they would be colder than ice. Nothing angry about them.

The way that I'd just heard him talk- it made me wonder if he had a very empty chest, too. And then I had to wonder if the reason he kissed so many girls was to fill up the gaping hole left inside. And then I remembered that I didn't care because I hated him. I hated him very much.

-

I left the school after that. I actually skipped school. But I couldn't imagine spending any more time there. My mom asked why I was home early, and my dad was so worried he didn't even mention the stupid math class I got into.

I locked myself in my room, not in the mood to be lectured about my feelings and the feelings of others.

My room wasn't really mine anymore, though. It was a room full of memories, not life. I wrapped myself up in a bundle of blankets in the corner- in the hopes of making a bulletproof shield from the rest of the world- but all I could see was Damien and Phil. And then all I could see was how much of an idiot I'd been.

My head was so busy melting, it took me a very long time to notice it. The little note taped to my window along with another daisy, exactly matching the one I'd received the day before.

It seemed that Phil wasn't giving up easily.

I opened my window and snatched the note, but left the daisy outside. For once, I had enough flowers. My fingers were shaking almost too much to open it up. A very small part of me hoped that the note would provide some kind of explaination- some kind of excuse- that would make it all go away. But I reminded myself that I didn't want to be his friend because I hated him.

kid.

i'm very sorry. i know i'm a dick. i'm working on it. here's the deal: damien is my friend, but so are you, and he doesn't change that. pier. 6. tonight. let's watch a sunset together and have a chat. maybe we can have a good time

\- phil

Unlike the first note I recieved, I only read that one once.

And then I crumpled it up and let it drop. And then I stepped on the note, just like Phil had stepped on me and all my stupid delusions of grandur. Because all the saftey tape was right, and I was finally ready to listen to it.

That stupid boy wouldn't make my stupid heart bleed anymore.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which two boys have a long-awaited conversation.

-phil-

The cotton candy clouds were swirling down from the evening sky and sweeping me off my feet. They tugged me up up up until my head was way above the water and the pier below me. I was floating around in the marmalade skies, held up only by the knot of balloons in my chest, woven around my heart.

Pop.

Dan wasn't there.

Pop.

He wasn't going to come.

Pop.

He hated me.

Pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop.

My feet crashed back onto the ground. Where the balloons used to be, now there were only strings tied to nothing.

I craned my neck around, searching for the fairy tale boy. He wasn't there. I'd been waiting on that stupid pier for an hour and a half already, and he never showed up. But I couldn't blame him. I couldn't even pretend to be upset with him. Because if I was Dan, I'd run and run and run away until my legs turned into dust.

"Fuck," I said loudly. I threw a pebble as hard as I could into the water.

He'd probably run forever. Because I pushed him until he- until we both- snapped. I laid back on the dock, my legs dangling over the edge.

I considered leaving that pier a hundred times. A million times. A billion billion billion times. But my feet weren't moving and I couldn't make them. It was stupid. I knew that. He wasn't going to show up. I'd never see those stupid fairy tale eyes again. I'd never see those stupid pink cheeks again. I'd never see those stupid dimples- the ones that drove me fucking wild- ever again.

I should have just left.

I closed my eyes, leaving my arms splayed out up above my head. He really wasn't coming. He really wasn't.

So what?

What did I care if he didn't show? I had other people that I cared about. I had friends and I had my dad and who the hell cared if one little boy didn't show up to hear my apology.

But none of them were really the same as him.

None of them made me feel like I was drinking lightning whenever I looked at them. None of them made me hope and wish and dream that one day I'd be closer to them. None of them were so fucking lovely that I'd gladly give up my entire future for a chance to see them smile.

So I stayed.

I stayed until the sun sank below the water and the clouds turned into flowers and the world was a blurred painting of watercolours. I stayed until three hours after he was supposed to get there. And thank fucking god that I did.

"Hey."

I spun around and then my stomach vanished.

Dan.

The space where my stomach used to be was full of angry butterflies.

Dan.

He was standing there. He had his tiny little hands stuffed into the middle pocket of his grey hoodie. And he didn't want to be there. It looked like he was shaking, but that might've been the wind. And it looked like he was crying, but that might've been my eyes.

"Dan."

I realized that I said his name outside of my head.

He swallowed thickly and looked away from me. I bit my lip.

He didn't look much like the kid who was at the football game with us. He looked like a poorly made copy of the same boy. Like someone had traced the outlines of him but forgot to colour the insides. Sure, it was Dan. Physically, everything was the same. But if you looked closely enough, it was easy to see that his eyes were missing. Instead of being stuffed with hope and colour- like before- they were made entirely of glass. Empty. Nothing left inside except for a few vacant wishes that he'd long since given up on.

And I realized that I was the one that turned him into glass.

But I swallowed my guilt and looked through the fog in my head because Dan was in front of me. "Hey, Dan. You can sit, if you want," I said, nodding to the spot beside me.

He shuffled forwards hesitantly. He didn't sit down, though. He remained standing a few feet away. He really hated me.

"I didn't think you were coming," I mumbled after a moment.

Dan let out a small puff of air. "I didn't think that I was coming, either," he whispered. It was surprising, how thinly Dan's voice had been stretched. I was worried that it might snap.

"Why am I here?" he asked. For the first time that night, he met my eyes. And it became obvious to me that he was about to cry.

I didn't want him to cry. I really didn't. I reached out to him, to put a hand on his shoulder, but he stepped away from me. And then his face went pale, and he stepped back again.

Too far.

Off the edge of the dock.

Into the water below.

When it first happened, I wasn't that concerned. I figured he'd climb back up, or swim back to the beach, or something. But he didn't. He'd started thrashing around, like he'd never swam before in his life. And then he was screaming. He was just screaming and screaming and screaming. Something had gone wrong in his head.

I pulled my jacket off, and tugged my shirt up over my head. "For fuck's sake, kid," I said to myself.

And then I dove in after him.

It wasn't that hard to grab him. He was pretty small, so I could handle all of his struggling. I tugged him back towards the beach, careful to keep his head above the water. Once I pulled him onto the sand, the harder part was getting him to stop crying. I'd never really seen anything like it before. Dan was absolutely not in his head anymore. His breathing was so violent I was worried that his lungs might rip. I didn't know what to do. I tried talking to him, but it was obvious that he couldn't hear me- or even see me- at all.

I ended up wrapping my arms around him, and scooping him up into my lap. I held him tightly, so that his back was pressing up against my chest, and sat there quietly as he cried and cried and cried.

After a few million years, he snapped out of it. His eyes found mine and they went wide. He looked down and at how the two of us were tangled up, and then he went red. He looked back at the water and at my soaking hair and then he stared at me again. It was almost as if he'd just woken up from a long sleep, completely unsure of where he was.

And then Dan hugged me.

It was without warning, he just lunged forwards and leaned into me, his arms slung around my neck. His forehead was pushing up against my chest, and little tufts of his soft hair were tickling my throat. I wrapped my arms around his tiny frame, and held him close close close. He didn't let go for a really long time.

"Thank you," he whispered quietly.

The way he was clinging to me- I doubted that anyone really hugged him like that.

Everything was lightning. And fire. And storms. And the sea. And flowers. And stars. We were burning up and freezing and exploding all at once. In the best way.

And then he let go of me and clambered off my lap. He looked at the ground.

"I'm sorry about that," he mumbled, while looking at the ground. "I saw you move, and- and I thought you were going to hurt me or something. And after that I guess I was paranoid- because I thought I s-saw a car pull over on the road and I thought it was Damien's car because I thought you called him over and I was scared that the two of you were going to kill me o-or something and- and I don't know, I just- I guess I got freaked out and didn't pay attention to where I was," he said, the words slipping from his lips faster than I'd ever seen before. "And then there was nothing but water water water and I guess I freaked out a bit. I do that sometimes. I'm really sorry."

"It's fine," I said quickly. "Don't worry about it."

We sat quietly, breathing up the silence and listening to the sounds of the waves. "Are you still that scared of me?" I added after a moment.

His face was bright pink, and he was looking at the sand instead of my eyes. "Sorry," he repeated. "It's not like I'm trying to be a wimp about the whole thing- it's just that whenever I trust people, it usually doesn't end very well for me."

Come on, Phil.

Come on, Phil.

"I'd like to say that I'm not his friend," I said in a voice that was much smaller- and much clumsier- than my normal one. "But then I'd be lying to you."

Dan started to shrink. Come on, Phil.

"The truth is that he's my friend. Has been for two years."

Dan shrank so much that he almost disappeared. Come on, Phil.

"But I didn't know anything about the two of you, okay? Until Amelia filled me in, I had no fucking idea about any of this."

"I don't believe you," Dan said quietly. He was so small that I had to squint my eyes to see him. In a few seconds, it would probably require a microscope.

I laughed a bit. "Do you know where I got this bruise on my cheek, Dan?" I asked, pointing up to the heavy blue mark that was smeared across my cheekbone.

He shook his head, his eyes softening slightly at the edges.

"In a fist fight with Damien. About ten seconds after you slammed the door," I said, wincing as I remembered it. "I asked him what the hell his problem was, and when he didn't answer I guess that I snapped. That doesn't happen much anymore."

He stared at me. Dan reached forwards, and touched the blot of night-sky that was pinned to my skin.

Dan's eyes went wide. "For real?"

I nodded at him.

"If you never want to speak to me again because Damien is an asshole, be my guest. I won't chase you down or try to convince you otherwise," I said slowly. "But I also really do care about all of my friends- I care about them more than anything in my life- and that includes you, Dan. And I just need you to understand that I never wanted you to get hurt."

I tried to make eye contact, but it seemed that Dan was almost gone again. He'd crumpled inwards until the only thing left showing was the skin that didn't fit him anymore.

"What do you see in him?" he asked.

I stared at Dan for a moment. The colours and emotions from his head began pouring out of his eyes for everyone to see. There was blue-sad smudging his cheeks, and red-hurt dripping from his jaw to his collar bones, and purple-confused all around his eyes.

"I see someone who is afraid," I answered quietly. "He wasn't always like this."

Dan glared at me. Pink-defeat was spilling down over his cheeks. "So you think it's fine that he hurts people, just because he's 'damaged', or whatever."

"No, it doesn't make it okay- it just. Look. He's just afraid of being hurt again. You get that, don't you?" I asked. "The thing is, Dan, I know he can be a dick, but once he cares about someone, he'd happily swallow the sun before letting them get hurt."

He laughed bitterly. And the face that I used to be able to read like a book turned into mist and clouds.

"You don't really get it, do you?" he asked.

"Get what?"

"Even if you weren't friends with Damien, even if he had a tragic backstory to explain his actions, I still couldn't be your friend."

"Why?"

"You're a flower-killer," he said.

His voice bit into me- and it was so horribly cold- it was clawing at my skin and making me bleed and bleed and bleed until the whole lake and the whole world and the whole sky turned red.

Dan laughed again, but there was nothing funny in the world. "It might be hard for you to understand- because you're pretty and good at talking and you actually have people in this world who love you-" Dan broke off. "But people have a tendency to leave me behind. I'm always the 'extra' person in a group. I'm the person that people forget about. And I'm the person who's so small and insignificant, people can afford to step on me."

I stared at him. He stared at the sky. I wondered if he was passing notes with the moon.

"The point is, Phil, if someone who is made of lace and cobwebs befriends someone who is made of fire and storms and lightning and magic, one of us is going to get hurt. And it won't be you," he said quietly.

I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand.

"And for once in my life, Phil freaking Lester, I don't want to be trampled just for the sake of having someone to talk to."

I tried to bring myself to say something to him. To say anything to him. But he was just sitting there- looking tiny and pathetic and so fucking sad- with his colourful emotions dripping down his face. And that sad little boy had opened up his chest and was holding his heart in an open palm.

And I still cared about Damien.

But his good qualities didn't cancel out the bad ones anymore.

And when I looked back at Dan's crumpled face, all of the words I wanted to say fell into the water below me. Only two were left.

"I'm sorry," I said quietly.

He stared at me, and a bead of purple-confused slid down his face. The other colours kind of faded away into nothing.

"I'm sorry for lots of things, Dan."

Dan shrugged, and looked away, but a few little roses were blooming on his cheeks again.

"I'm sorry that I didn't know about Damien before now. And I'm sorry that I never spoke to you before the bleachers. And I'm sorry that I'm an idiot. And I'm sorry that I'm a 'flower-killer', whatever that is. And I'm sorry that you've been stuck on this miserable planet without decent people to be miserable with," I said.

And then I was swallowing lightning again because for a split second it looked like Dan didn't hate me.

"And I'm really fucking sorry for snapping at you earlier. When you yelled at me, you hit too close to home," I said. I stared at him. "I deserved it. And I would also deserve it if you never spoke to me again, but I really wish you will because I'm selfish and you're beautiful and I'm sorry."

Our eyes were screaming at each other but we were silent.

"Tell me something," he said.

"What?"

"Just so that I know you aren't lying to me. Tell me one of those secrets you have locked up inside your chest."

He was watching me and I knew that if I didn't pull it together right that second then he'd slip away into nothing.

"I almost failed a grade," I blurted out.

Idiot idiot idiot idiot idiot.

It was a bad idea.

It was a really bad idea.

That was off-limits.

Not for his ears.

My mouth wouldn't stop.

"The school said that I had to take these special classes during the summer to make it to grade twelve since my marks were so shit last year," I admitted. "My dad had to fucking beg her to help me because he didn't have the money to pay for it. Any sure, she went and she paid and she smoothed things over, but then she at me like I was a problem instead of a person."

Idiot idiot idiot idiot idiot.

I was begging my brain to let me stop.

To please just let me stop talking.

It was too late.

Dan was watching me very closely, and I was almost positive that my feelings were sliding down my face, too. "It just really sucks, you know? All of my friends are going to go on and do such great things, and I'll just be stuck here. I won't get married, I won't get a good job, I won't get a good house. I'll turn into nothing, just like you said."

Idiot idiot idiot idiot idiot.

"I'll have to live the rest of my stupid Nothing-Life knowing that the highest point of my existence was sitting under the bleachers with a sad boy and trying to make him feel better," I said bitterly. "And then I let that beautiful fucking boy slip away."

Dan vanished into thin air and so did I and all that was left was a puddle of emotions everywhere. I'd turned into nothing but these horribly loud thoughts that were screaming to be heard. I couldn't just see the colours spilling from my eyes, I could hear them. I was them.

We were staring and staring at each other and I was pretty sure that my skin had turned all see-through and he could see into my soul because of how hard he was staring.

"My dad only likes me because I'm smart," Dan said, the words sliding from his mouth faster than mine had. "The fact that I'm in a few advanced grade twelve classes is the first thing I've ever done that he's been remotely proud of."

He laughed a bit.

"My dad wanted a football player, not someone who gets stepped on by them."

I stared at him. He stared at the sky.

I stared at him some more. He looked very empty, just then. It seemed that he wasn't very good at opening up, either. And where I had a small box of secrets below my skin, he had more. He had a whole chest full. He had a universe full of top secret fragile things inside of him.

"I feel really bad for pinning you up earlier," I admitted. "It was a shitty thing to do."

He shrugged.

I smirked at him. "But if the circumstances were- y'know- different, I'd love to pin you up against a wall."

Dan turned into a freaking tomato.

And then he started to laugh. Really laugh. Laugh like I'd never seen before. It was uncontrollably and giggly and so sweet that it made me laugh with him. After it started, it kept on pouring and pouring and it felt like we were both made out of the summer breeze instead of skin and bone.

He leaned into me.

"Can we forget about this?" he asked softly.

"About what?"

"Me hating you," he suggested. "Because it seems that I don't anymore."

And all of the balloons in my chest had reappeared.

He paused. "Under further inspection, I actually like you quite a lot."

I grinned at him, and my smile felt too big for my face. I stood up and grabbed his hands and pulled him up to his feet. I stood there staring at him for a few moments. He was smiling, too.

We started to walk down the beach together. I watched Dan's right leg, pulling behind his left like normal. And I watched as his chest rose and fell with every breath he took.

And I watched as his very brown eyes trailed on my chest- which was still very shirtless- for one, two, three, four, five ridiculously long seconds.

I snapped my fingers in front of his face. "My eyes are up here, darling."

Dan turned back into a tomato. That time it was my turn to laugh.

"I wasn't looking," he said quickly.

"I'm sure you weren't."

"I wasn't!"

"But if it wasn't my physique you were staring at, what was it? It must've been something incredible, since your gorgeous eyes were really distracted with something."

"I was distracted by how much of an idiot you are."

I laughed. He tried his best not to.

"I don't mind, you know. Feel free to stare all you want."

He hit my arm with one of his little sweater paws.

"You are so full of it, Phil freaking Lester."

"Good."

I wasn't looking at him, but I could tell that bright colours were spilling out of him for the first time that night. I could feel happy-pink and flattered-green and excited-yellow radiating off of him. His happiness filled up the air around us until the sand and the moon and my heart were all very happy, too.

And then Dan stumbled and grabbed onto my arm to keep himself stable, and all I could hear was how lovely he was.

His hand was on my arm and his eyes were on mine and my heart was in my throat.

I wondered if he was getting the whole 'this-totally-feels-like-a-fucking-date-even-though-we're-just-friends' vibe. I started to wonder if Just Friends knocked into each other that much. Or if Just Friends hugged as much as we did.

We kept walking, the pier far behind us. Dan became all quiet again and we started to breathe in sync. I didn't know what to say, but the whole world was so loud with the sound of the clouds and waves and sand that I didn't really need to say anything at all. I could hear all the stars in the sky whispering about us.

"Why do you like me?" Dan asked, interrupting all the things in my head.

I stared right at his face for a moment. He squirmed when I didn't answer right away.

"What kind of question is that?"

He shrugged. "Answer it."

I scratched the back of my neck. "I guess I think that you're pretty cool. And you're obviously really fucking smart, judging by the report card I saw pinned up on your bedroom wall. I didn't know that you could even get 100 percent in biology."

He blushed a bit.

"I think what I really like about you is that you are horribly kind. When most people go through shit, they become cruel and cold. But you're just soft and sweet to everyone around you, even though none of them deserve it. And I mean, there's also the fact that you're just so fucking adorable."

I stopped talking.

"There's just something about you. Something that you don't see in most people. It's like you're from a story book. A story book full of fairy tales about magic."

More roses were blooming all over his cheeks.

"The boy who picked flowers instead of arguments."

Dan looked up at me.

"That's the title of the story you're in," I explained.

The boy who picked flowers instead of arguments.

He stared at the sky and that time I was quite sure that he and the moon were communicating somehow.

The swarm of angry butterflies in my stomach were becoming increasingly ferocious. I felt all fluttery and jittery in my own skin. It was kind of the feeling I got with the girls that I kissed but somehow this felt different. It felt like more.

"What's your story, then?" Dan asked me.

I shoved my hands in my pockets. "I don't think I'm in that story book. I'm not that kind of person."

Dan turned away from me. He started to walk, so I followed him. And then he shut his eyes. He was thinking about something. He looked mad.

"You're an idiot. Did you know that?" he asked, his eyes burning.

"Why am I an idiot this time?" I asked.

He became very still for a second. Then he stepped closer to me and grabbed onto my hands with his and he was holding them holding them holding them. He was looking at my face for awhile, like he was trying to read what it was saying.

"The boy who could soar with the stars, but chose to walk on the ground," he said quietly.

"What?"

"You're in a story too. Your story is the one right after mine. I'm sure of it."

"What's my story about?" I asked quietly.

He closed his eyes as he thought about it. He leaned forwards and rested the top of his head on my chest. Then he looked back up at me.

"A boy who makes himself small. He chooses to expect nothing from anything because he doesn't think that he's worth it," Dan said. "I run from people, you run from yourself,"

I froze.

"But I think- I know- that you can fly. Even if you're still figuring that out. Even if you've only ever walked. From now on, Phil freaking Lester, I'm going to choose to expect miracles from you."

I smiled.

He did, too.

That time, I was the one who hugged him.

And then I melted into nothing but light and so did he.

And he was right. We were flying.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Dan attempts to stand by Phil's side.

-dan-

I'd only known Phil freaking Lester for two weeks, and he was already making unimagible imparts on my life. All the formalities that I'd held so close to my chest had started to crumble and fade, making way for new patterns to emerge.

It was a good thing, though.

When I was little, all the kids in my neighbourhood loved to play hide and seek. They'd stay outside for hours upon hours, until the fireflies came out and their faces were flushed and full of fallen stars. Back in those days, I played too.

All of my friends and I- we weren't just ordinary children. Because those late nights full of games and laughter, they had filled our veins up with moonlight and starlight and oh my god, we were magical. Jonathan, Sara, and I. By the fifth grade, we all had flowers growing in our bellies and wings sprouting from our heels. Times with the three of us, they were something special. Even though none of us really fit in, we fit in with each other and it was always enough. Because we could fly high above our enemies, where their words could never catch up.

But even back then, emptiness had this funny way of leaking into my life.

Because right as I was starting to bloom into something truly spectacular, right as the daisy inside of me had petals sprouting from my hair and roots sinking into our laughter- he died.

He.

Died.

And just like that, all my roots were ripped from the ground, my stem was cut, and I was shoved in a cold glass bottle. And then when I wilted, the whole wide world asked why I wasn't happy anymore.

The sun went out. That was the first big thing that happened after I found out. I'd wake up to a spring day and it wouldn't be spring, because the sun was gone. Or I'd walk to school on a crisp autumn morning, but it wouldn't really feel like fall because there wasn't a sun in the sky there was only black.

Those endless winter days, after he was gone and before the flowers were back. Those were when people stopped talking to me. Sara grew up in a matter of minutes, and suddenly all she cared about was kissing boys, not our adventures. And Jonathan joined the track team, and he had to clip his wings so he could run faster.

Because nobody knows how to talk to someone who's wilted away into nothing.

But it was okay. Because I had my guide to wildflowers. It could always keep me company.

It was the very same one that they found his note in.

I never got to read it. My mom said it wouldn't have helped.

Soon, my old friends stopped saying hi to me in the hallways. And after their pity had all melted away, they promptly forgot that they'd ever known me at all.

It didn't really matter, though. I forgot about them, too. I was busy thinking about the lack of him in my life, and how he'd never come home again. I stayed inside more often, during those cold cold cold cold cold winter days. I pressed all of the flowers he'd ever given me, so that I could immortalize what little of him I had left. Whenever it got too bad, or my brain started going to that place where everything was fog, I'd just pretend that he wasn't really gone, he was only outside picking some more buttercups for me.

It was also during that endless winter that I started to study the names in that stupid flower book he gave me. I used to read over those names and definitions until my mind went numb because at least a numb brain wasn't thinking about him.

Before it happened, I'd always assumed that grief was some little thing that bothered you for a few months, and then went away. But my winter never felt like ending. After the sun left the sky, it never really came back. The sky was black until studying did no good anymore because I already knew all the names and all of the definitions. As winter persisted to spring melted to summer cooled to fall froze to winter again, it all hurt just as bad.

Things like that, they never really stop hurting. That kind of ache doesn't. It persisted longer than I imagined possible. It persisted until it became normal, and that was the closest thing to comfort I'd ever known.

Until a brand new him walked into my life.

Until I was snapped out of my permanent winter by a boy who had dreams too big for his head.

Oh god, that boy who could soar with the stars, but chose to walk on the ground.

For the first few days, I never really noticed just how much of an impact he had. He'd smile at me, and I wouldn't notice the sky becoming slightly less black. Or he'd tell me something completely hilarious, or he'd introduce me to someone new, and I wouldn't notice the brand new flowers in my brain.

It wasn't until that night on the dock with him. I was laughing so hard that my sides hurt, and then I looked down and I saw my feet floating up off the ground for the first time since I was eleven. It was then that I realized just how lucky I was. How he was everything I used to crave so badly.

And how he was still what I craved so badly.

Because he was everything I needed to depart from those past eras of my life.

And maybe- just maybe- if I caught enough of his smiles, then one day the sun might turn on again.

-

"Hey, kid, wait up!"

I turned around, and all I could see was Phil freaking Lester and his lopsided smile. The entire hallway and all of the people dissolved and I froze for a moment, and I was just staring at him.

"So then, darling. Have you considered my proposition yet?" His voice was so bright that it seemed to flood the whole hallway with light. I didn't really hear what he said, I was distracted by the realization that his eyes were made of clouds and mine were made of petals.

"Dan?" he asked, waving a hand in front of my face. My eyes snapped up.

He was looking at me like he was expecting a response, but I'd forgotten how to speak. It wasn't my fault, though. When he started talking, his hand found its way to my shoulder and his fingers were tracing little patterns through my shirt sleeve and I found it hard to concentrate on anything else.

He laughed softly to himself, and then started talking again, more clearly this time. "I asked if you wanted to sit with me and my friends at lunch."

The lights in the hallway turned off. Or maybe I just couldn't see them anymore.

"If I go, Damien will skin me alive," I said bluntly.

"He needs arms to skin you."

"So?"

He laughed a bit. "I'll rip those off before he becomes an issue."

I grabbed his hand. As sweet as Phil was, it felt like the walls in my head were crumbling. It felt like the ground had turned into quicksand and I was sinking.

"Do you promise that it'll be okay?"

He looked at me with stars in his eyes.

"I promise."

I nodded at him, stars in mine.

We left the school together, heading to where we were supposed to meet them. My head was struggling to stay afloat. He smiled and tugged me forwards until we made it under the bleachers.

It was my first time being there since The Day. It felt like I was swimming into an old memory, and I wondered if Phil felt that way, too.

It was funny how that worked. How I could hear that one song, or see that one face, and suddenly it would be another time. Suddenly, I'd fall into that old headspace with those old thoughts. And seeing that place, being under those bleachers, it brought me back until all of the sudden I was meeting Phil for the first time again and those eyes were looking at me with that mix of curiosity and amusement. My world was starting and stopping at the same time while my mind spun.

Phil touched my shoulder very lightly, bringing me back to the present. The old bleachers in my head melted away and I was left staring at the real ones.

Amelia was there, and she had a bouquet of flowers tucked into the front pocket of her overalls. She was lying down with her head on Spencer's lap, and Damien was across from them.

DamienDamienDamienDamienDamienDamienDamienDamienDamienDamien.

And then Phil's eyes caught mine.

"Kid. It's okay."

Phil walked forwards a bit, and I followed right after him. We sat down next to each other. Before I got a chance to worry, he wrapped an arm around my shoulders, and pulled me very close to his side. I was safe.

"It's been awhile since our last get together," Phil said. "If anyone's forgotten, this is Dan Howell."

Everyone was quiet for a few seconds. There was tension strung across our group like a spider web- holding all of our mouths shut while our eyes flickered wildly.

Amelia managed to rip her arm free of the cobwebs, and she waved at me. I waved back. She had buttercups in her hair.

"So," Spencer said. His words were slow and cautious. "Do we have a final decision on what's going on after school?"

"Depends."

It was Damien.

"It depends," he continued, "on whether or not The Brain is invited." He nodded over to where I was sitting.

Phil gently squeezed my shoulder with his hand. I looked up at him, but he was too busy staring at Damien to meet my eyes. I wondered how he had the strength to do that. I wondered where he got the power to command the stars with his gaze.

"I'm sorry to disappoint you, asshole, but he's coming." Phil's voice was gruffer than I remembered. It was sharp, chiseled from lava and stone.

Damien's green green green eyes were staring at the two of us. I looked at my hands.

"Phil, I'm sorry that I'm the one to tell you this, but your little boy toy is a freak." His words were venom and I could feel them cutting into me. "He does some fucking creepy shit."

My heart was sinking down in my chest. Down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down.

"Damien, what the fuck is your problem? He's just a fucking kid." Phil's eyes had become a scalding blue fire. I didn't know how Damien was managing to hold his gaze.

"Have you really never noticed, Philly?" Damien said, his voice turning from venom to acid. "He steals things."

I was trapped under a thousand spotlights and I was trapped under a thousand eyes. But most of all, I was trapped under Damien's stupid freaking words. My bones weren't strong enough to hold me up anymore. They were crumbling into dust as my paper skin stretched to hold me together. And after a few seconds, I turned into a big pile of nothing.

I looked around frantically at Amelia and Spencer and I couldn't figure out why they were so quiet. And Phil- he wasn't talking either. As soon as the word 'steal' had come out of Damien's mouth, he'd just frozen. He was a statue- a statue that was staring at Damien. And sure, his arm was still over my shoulders. But I didn't know if it was there to protect me or to keep me from running away.

Damien stood up.

Phil stood still.

I was screaming inside of my own head, telling Phil to please dear god do something you promised you promised you promised don't let him do this please you're all going to hate me.

Phil didn't hear my thoughts, though.

Damien was stepping closer and Phil was watching him. And then Damien grabbed my bag and was holding it in his hands and I wanted to do something but I was trapped under Phil's arm and I could only watch.

"It was awhile ago when I saw this klepto take it, but I'm pretty sure it's still in here," he said.

I wished that Phil would rip it out of his hands.

I wished that Phil would tell him to fuck off already.

I wished that he'd just see how afraid I was.

But he never did any of those things. He was just staring at the sky, with his jaw clenched.

I remembered how he told me that he cared about me and how nothing bad would happen because he promised me and now that was all forgotten and all that was left was Damien.

Damien.

He'd tugged something out of my bag- a crumpled ball of paper.

Dread. Was. The. Only. Thing. Left. In. My. Chest.

"And look at this," he said softly. "One of Phil Lester's old math tests."

And then my heart got ripped out. And then it was stepped on and chopped up into tiny little pieces. And then it didn't exist anymore, and I couldn't feel anything at all, not even stupid Phil's stupid arm.

I dropped my eyes to the ground as quickly as I could because I didn't want to see Phil's expression when he started to hate me.

With every single second that passed, my chest ached even more.

And then, without a word, Phil took his arm off of my shoulders.

I was alone, and small, and sad. I started to blow away from the real world and into my head.

Drifting drifting drifting because this wasn't real it couldn't be real Phil wouldn't do these things to me he wouldn't let them he promised me he promised me he promised me he promised me he promised me he promised me he promised me.

And then Phil laughed.

I was snapped back down to earth.

He exhaled loudly. "Oh great fucking job, Damien."

Damien just stared.

"I'm so proud of you," Phil said. "He has a fucking math test."

I looked up at him, but Phil didn't meet my eyes. I stared at that strange, impossible creature. Whenever I almost understood him, he changed the rules on me.

Damien's eyes hardened. "Are you really going to defend this fucking kleptomaniac?"

I looked back at Spencer and Amelia, but they were frozen, just like me. It seemed that Phil and Damien both had personalities that were so big they left no room for the rest of us.

"Give him the fucking bag back already," Phil spat, his eyes made out of something even more ferocious than flames.

I wondered how it was possible that he only ever gave me miracles.

Damien glared again. "What, so now it's fine for him to steal shit as long as he keeps blowing the freaks he steals from?"

Phil stood up so quickly that I jumped a little bit. A second later, he had a hand grabbing Damien's collar, and they were nose to nose.

"Either you give him the bag, or the two of us have a fucking problem, got that?"

They were staring at each other for a long time. Phil's hands were shaking.

Spencer was standing a second later, ready to step in.

"Yeah, whatever." Damien dropped my bag on the ground. "I just hope you know what you're getting into, Phil."

They were staring at each other for a few more seconds, and as soon as Phil let go of his shirt, Damien walked away.

And then Phil turned his attention back to me, his eyes were large and blue and I didn't know if they were angry or sad or disappointed or what.

But I didn't wait around to find out. I was too busy running.

-

My back was pushed up against the wall of the school. I was holding onto my bag, clutching it tightly to my chest. I didn't want anyone to take it from me again. I didn't want anyone to talk to me again.

I was trying very hard both to disappear and stay alive at the same time.

I looked at the ground.

I heard heavy footsteps from around the corner.

I kept looking at the ground.

I saw the beat up black shoes stop in front of me. They were Phil's.

I refused to look up. The ground was the only thing that was keeping me there. Otherwise, I'd slip into space and drift until the moon swallowed me whole.

I heard him sit down in front of me. His hands were resting in the space between us.

I had to keep staring at the ground. If I looked up then I might fall into his eyes and drown in them.

"Kid."

Where his voice used to command power, now it seemed to be made out of the same stuff as mine: cobwebs, lace, flower petals.

I looked at the ground. I looked at it until my eyes were burning. I looked at it until I was crying.

"Was it true?" he asked in the same delicate voice.

God. I would not look up. I would not get lost or drift away or fall in love because I was staring at the ground and not at him.

"Dan?" His hand moved slowly, like he was scared of something. He touched the base of my chin and tilted it up.

I looked at his eyes. I couldn't help myself. His furious, sad, beautiful eyes. The ground was long forgotten.

"You can tell me anything, you know."

I shook my head. I shook it over and over.

He exhaled heavily.

"I didn't do anything, Phil," I said quietly. My voice sounded like snow and tinsel.

I could hear his thoughts and I knew that he didn't believe me.

I didn't believe me, either.

We both knew that I was lying.

"Dan."

I kept shaking my head because I couldn't stop thinking. "Please don't make me tell you, Phil. God- I just- I don't want you to hate me. And if I tell you-"

The words that were spilling out of me were weak and pathetic and I couldn't do anything.

We breathed each other's feelings for a moment.

"Do you really think so poorly of me, that you're afraid to talk?" Phil's voice was smaller than I'd ever heard it before.

"No. No, please don't think that, Phil." I said. "God, I- I think the whole entire world of you-"

He grabbed my hands.

"Dan," he said finally, his voice sounding more tired than it had before.

I looked up at him again and he was so freaking empty.

"The world won't end if you trust me, you know. I'm not actually that bad of a guy."

I looked down because instead of imagining me as someone better, for the first time he was painting me into the person I was.

He held my hands more tightly than before, and then leaned forwards so that our foreheads touched. My breath hitched in my throat. All I could see smell taste hear touch was Phil right in front of me.

I could feel the universe pouring out of his head and into mine.

And I could feel how scared he was.

"Please, Dan."

I waited. Then I looked up. Our foreheads were still touching, and then there were these blue blue blue eyes right in front of mine. And I discovered that you just can't lie to someone who makes blue your favourite colour.

I took a deep breath.

"I- just. I don't really know why," I said, as the petals dripped from my fingertips. "Sometimes I just need to take things- as proof that I haven't disappeared yet. And as proof that other people can still see me."

He nodded quietly.

We spoke for a few minutes. No lies or fake words. Old and new truths slid from my lips and Phil patiently collected them all in jars.

And then kissed the top of my head very lightly.

When he walked away to go talk to Damien, I started to wonder if he was ever there at all.

-

There were exactly seventeen minutes left in the lunch period. Only seventeen minutes and then class was going to start and I'd need to climb back out of my head.

I pulled my knees closer to my chest.

It was hard to imagine. Focusing and taking notes when all of my energy was being poured into keeping my heart beating long enough to pull another breath into my body.

Just like before, I was staring at the ground when another pair of black shoes appeared. I looked up.

But where there was blue before, now there was only green.

It was Damien again and I almost started to cry.

He was standing a few feet away, his hands shoved in his pockets. If I didn't know him better, I might say that he looked smaller than normal. Like someone took the stars from his veins.

"Hey," he said quietly. "Are you okay?"

"What's it to you?" I asked. The sharpness in my voice surprised me.

He looked down. "I spoke to Phil just now. After, y'know, all that."

Damien stood there quietly for a moment. He was kicking the ground a bit.

My chest was tight. It was getting harder and harder to breathe. I couldn't figure out what he wanted- or why he looked so damn sad. The sky was overcast, full of billowing clouds.

"I've been thinking," he said.

"Oh?"

"I shouldn't hate you. I know that," he muttered. "You just- you stole my best friend."

I became very quiet because I'd never heard him talk like that before.

"There are only three people in this entire world that genuinely care about me. And since you've come into the picture, they only ever seem to be mad at me."

I stared at him for a few seconds. He sat down next to me, leaning up against the wall.

My hands were shaking very badly but I had a sip of courage so warm it burned my throat- I had to stay there with him. Because this was the first time I'd ever spoken to him for real.

"It's just fucking hard sometimes, Dan. You're funny and nice and smart and all that shit. Phil always talks about how you'll get into some great school and how you've achieved these great things-"

He held his head in his hands. I could see his fingers trembling.

"It just stings to know that your best friend likes someone else more than you. You've already got fucking everything, and now you're going after the only thing I've ever had."

I couldn't see his face, but I was pretty sure that he was crying.

"I didn't know you thought so highly of me," I said softly.

He laughed bitterly.

"Fuck. I know that I was- that I am- a complete asshole. I get that."

I watched as all of the walls in his head shattered, just like mine had earlier.

"We reflect what we're given, okay? Someone like you- someone with a future and good grades- the whole world loves you. You've got teachers and parents applauding you and telling you that you really can catch your dreams. With kids like me, it doesn't go that smoothly. I've got every fucking human being in my life telling me that I'm an awful person- and things like that make it really fucking difficult to be decent to people who have more than you."

He stopped talking. There was a river coming out of his chest, loaded with the fragile things he'd kept tucked away. The water was filling up the world until we were both straining our necks to keep our mouths above the water.

"Why are you telling me this?" I asked.

He laughed again. "I'm trying to say that I'm sorry, you fucking idiot."

"You're joking."

He shook his head. "Daniel Howell, I'd like to formally apologize for being a past and present asshole. And I mean that."

He looked at me with hope in his eyes.

"Y'know, Damien, if you wanted to be my friend that badly you could've just asked."

I smiled at him, hope in mine.

He laughed more. Nothing was funny. He looked at the ground again and I did too. There was something reassuring about knowing I wasn't the only person with a brain full of glass. We stayed there for a long time, breathing in clouds, breathing out rain. Breathing in secrets, breathing out trust. Breathing in enemies, breathing out friends.

When the bell rang, I started to stand up, but he grabbed my wrist first.

I did my best not to flinch away from him.

"Do you want to skip?" he asked suddenly.

"Like, down the hall?"

"No, like out of fifth period. Phil was thinking about leaving."

I shook my head. "Oh no, I don't skip."

He laughed, but not in a sad way anymore. He stood up, too, and then his eyes were full of an idea. "Have you ever heard of living in the moment?"

"My life doesn't have a lot of moments," I said.

"That was before us."

-

The five of us were sprinting through the parking lot.

"Phil, you can't keep claiming that our Aunt died to get us out of class," Amelia yelled, a hint of a smile on her lips.

"The Dead-Aunt excuse is flawless," Phil protested.

Amelia had to hold onto Spencer's shoulder to keep from tipping over, she was laughing so much.

"This is the seventh time, Phil."

I laughed, too. My insides were boiling. Because I was actually skipping class. My dad might skin me if he found out. And I might die. But it felt like I was being a real teenager for the first time in my life so I followed Phil to his turquoise car without looking back.

"What's the plan?" Spencer asked.

"Dan does stuff for other people all the time," Phil said, climbing into the front seat of the car. "Tonight, this is us doing something for him."

Before I knew it, I was in the middle seat between Damien and Spencer. Phil was driving, Amelia was next to him.

I checked my watch and I was supposed to be in my Geometry class. My heart was clawing at my chest because I was breaking the rules. Phil pulled out of the parking lot and then we were gone.

My heart was beating fast. So fast. But in a good way.

Amelia turned on the radio. It was one of the bands Phil liked: Platinum Blonde or The Cure or something. The music was so loud I could tell what colour it was.

Spencer had an arm over my shoulder and Damien had his feet up over the back of Amelia's chair.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

Spencer grinned.

"Far away from everything."

I looked at him curiously.

"You'll have fun, I promise. This is kind of our way of celebrating."

And then Phil was really excited because a good song came on. It was called 'Mint Car', and he said it was the best summer song of all time. And even though it was technically the fall of the new school year, it still felt summery outside. The air smelled like pockets full of promises and hot nights full of stolen kisses.

And I felt like I was inside the song because oh god I just couldn't believe that it was real.

I could feel wind ruffling my hair and arms around me we were flying down the road, probably illegally fast.

"Do you like the song?" Phil asked me.

"I've never heard it before."

"Really?" Spencer said, staring at me.

"I don't even have a record player," I said quietly.

Spencer stared at me for a good fifteen seconds, like he thought I was joking.

"What do you do with your time? Get off?"

"He spends it being a fucking genius," Phil said from the front seat. "I saw one of his report cards... His lowest mark was a 96%."

I looked down. All eyes were on me. My cheeks were flaming. "I just- I test well, is all."

Phil laughed a bit. "Don't be fooled by his lies. He's ridiculously brilliant."

I smiled.

"Watch this," he said, clearing his throat. People turned my way and I blushed some more and Phil laughed some more.

"Dan, what's the scientific name of a daisy?"

"Bellis perennis," I answered.

"Sunflower," he said.

"Helianthus annuus," I answered.

"Poppy," he said.

"Papaver somniferum," I answered.

"Lilacs," he said.

"Syringa," I answered.

Everyone was staring at me but they didn't look at me like I was weird or a freak they just looked impressed.

"He's totally just making up words," Amelia said.

Phil shook his head. "No. He's just brilliant."

And then Phil started to drive crazy fast. Apparently, he was chasing the sun. I could tell that this was some kind of ancient tradition between the group. My heart had gone wild. And the people around me, they were so freaking bizarre. In the best way. And maybe that's what was so great about the five of us. They were each so different- each with their own discreet tics- that they didn't think I was crazy. Not for a second. Even when I started crying because of how pretty it all was, nobody called me out or made fun of me. And I wasn't stepped on, not even once. Because I was flying so high that I didn't need to crane my neck to see their eyes.

"I want to press this moment, like I press my flowers," I said softly.

I was crying very hard. The world looked blurry but happy.

"Why's that?" Phil asked. His voice sounded like strawberry sunshine.

"Everyone can see me right now. But you aren't seeing me in a bad way or anything. You all think that Dan- the real Dan- is enough."

Nobody said anything. They all became this strange kind of quiet and I didn't know if they were happy or sad. Maybe they were both of them at once and that was fine because I was too.

Phil sped up until the car and the music and the people all melted away and we were the colours smeared across the sky.

I just wanted to take off my shoes and step inside that daydream of a night. I wanted to lie there, curled up with the softness that was friendship. I wanted to drink up the sweetness of their words and cherish them all. I wanted it to last forever.

We chased the sun across the clouds until it was dark, then we went over to Phil's house because his Dad would be working late so we could be loud.

We were all squished together on the old couches in Phil's basement. Some people were drinking and some of them weren't but it didn't matter to me because their conversations didn't leave me behind. There weren't any inside jokes, or stories I that were too complicated for me to understand. All of their words waited for me and they asked me questions and seemed to care about my answers.

I felt like the most important person in the world. I felt like we were the only people in the world. Like everyone else had just vanished.

Phil's records- ones playing the music that could burn stars- they crackled on into the night and so did our laughter.

And for the first time since he died, I felt that special kind of happy that let me know I was exactly where I needed to be.

And every time I laughed or smiled or felt my heart leap, I could just tell that my roots were finally growing back.

Because for the first time in a long time, I was remembering what it was like to be loved.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Phil climbs through a window.

-phil-

No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't get my hands to stop shaking. They were made out of lightning or something- but not the good kind. I felt like I was hollow, like I was fake, like I was dreaming.

There was something off in my head.

When I stepped outside, it was raining flowers. Daisies were dripping from the sky and down my cheeks. My heart felt very heavy. It was sinking down down down down in my chest, just like how my legs were sinking down down down down into the pavement below me.

It was really damn cold outside. I would have gone back for my coat, but I couldn't face him again. I had to get out of there. There were stars falling all around me. The sky had given up on them. The whole world had this kind of washed-out look to it.

I was disappearing with every step I took.

I started to run. If I slowed down, even for a second, the ground might've swallowed me whole. My hands were still shaking, and I felt like my heart was catching on fire. Like my lungs were drowning in the smoke.

It was one of those things. I shouldn't have shown up at Dan's place. It wouldn't end well. But I didn't know where else to go or who else to see. All I could think of was how warm Dan's room would be, and how his eyes would probably be even warmer.

I stood out on his lawn for a few minutes, catching my breath and looking around at his idle little town. Everything looked so neat and organized. The streetlamps were captured fairies, the houses were towering kingdoms.

There was nobody else outside that night. It was strange, how everything was deserted. I was the only person alive- or that's what it felt like, anyway. I could have screamed and nobody would have noticed. I could have laughed and nobody would have cared.

I wiped my eyes off on my sleeve before I tapped on Dan's window. I had to wait for a second. God, it was cold. When he saw me standing there, his eyes went really wide.

Dan opened the window quickly, but he kept staring at me like he wasn't sure if I was real or not.

"Phil," he whispered. "What are you doing here?"

"Hey, kid. Nice to see you. You look lovely tonight," I said. I was pretty breathless. "Listen. Could you let me in? It's really fucking cold out here."

After he nodded, I clambered in. I couldn't think straight, so I kind of tipped over and had to grab onto him. Normally, I might've been embarrassed, but I was distracted by how damn pretty he was.

"Phil, are you drunk?" he asked. His voice was quieter than before.

"No. Listen. I've got a favour to ask of you."

I noticed that his whole room looked like strawberry sunshine. He looked like strawberry sunshine. There were flowers everywhere everywhere everywhere, not to mention the crystals and candles and dreamcatchers.

"Are you okay?" he asked, stepping a little closer to me. "Phil?"

"Could we get outta here, Dan? I need a distraction right now. I don't care where we go- it could be anywhere."

There was a pause. I just stared at him.

Dan grabbed my hand. His fingers were perfectly still. "No. Absolutely not. You need to sleep, and I need to study. No way."

There was something funny about that, to be honest. He thought I could just sleep. Like I could just turn my brain off. Like I could actually feel safe enough to shut my eyes right then.

"You've studied enough for a lifetime," I said. "Please, Dan. I wouldn't be asking you this unless it was really important."

He frowned and didn't say anything. I put my hands on his shoulders.

"C'mon, kid. Please. I just need some fire in me right now, okay? This is how I deal with things. I need action. I need to feel alive."

He sat down and let out a breath. I held mine.

"Fine."

I smiled quite a lot when he said that. My hands were still shaking, but it was more of a buzz. My heart was still on fire, but it was a kind of good fire. It was excitement and freedom and a little bit of numb.

"You're a really fucking good guy, Dan. You know that, right?"

He smiled a bit, and I felt my heart sigh. It was strange. I didn't think that I'd feel that way.

I ended up borrowing one of his sweaters, and then the two of us climbed out his window. The stars were way duller than I remembered. Or maybe Dan was just brighter than them. He kept glancing at me like he was scared that I might do something crazy.

He stood there frozen for a few seconds, so I had to grab onto his arm and pull him a bit. I didn't know where I was going, I just had to move. I had to. We followed the street lamps until there weren't any, and after that, we followed the sky.

"Are you actually okay?" he asked finally.

"I'm fine."

He turned and looked at me, and I knew that my skin had gone clear. His hand was holding onto mine, and in that moment, I couldn't move. I was trapped by him and his gaze. He was reading my thoughts and listening to my dreams and examining my secrets. I couldn't hide a thing.

He was quiet for a long time after that. When he finally moved, it wasn't the sentence I wanted.

"Sorry. I'm just worried about you."

I tugged my hand back and started walking again. My skin stopped being clear. I could feel it crumbling in on me. I was fighting against the falling sky to stand up straight, because I was about to disappear for good.

I was turning into a dream, and nothing more.

The world was waking up.

-

We were sitting on a park bench after that. I hardly remembered walking there. Nobody else was around that night- it was just us. There was nothing to distract us, either. I could hear the soft puffs of his breath. I could see his fingers trembling. I could feel his thoughts echoing.

"Can I ask you a question?" he said softly.

I looked up at him, but he was too busy examining his shoes to meet my eyes.

"Yeah, sure."

We were quiet again, and he just looked at me. We said a lot, in those seconds. Flowers were spilling from his eyes, but I tried not to focus on them.

"What happened?" he asked. He tried to make it sound casual- like it didn't matter. But the stars were holding their breath as they waited for my answer.

"Nothing. Just a rough night."

He leaned into me. His eyes looked very sad. He said nothing.

"God- Dan- just quit it already.I didn't come to see you for pity, okay?"

Flowers were spilling out of my eyes, too. Except it wasn't just my eyes. There were flowers spilling out of everything and everywhere all at once. I was drowning in them.

"What happened?" he repeated.

He was drowning in them, too.

"Phil?"

I knew that I didn't want to tell him. But then his hand brushed up against mine. My body turned to sand under his touch. My secrets were spilling out into the air around us, and I could only watch.

"A fight happened," I said quietly. "My dad- he's manic-depressive or bipolar or whatever- and he had a bad day. We were yelling a lot, to put it lightly. I left my house because I was scared as shit. My head's kinda off tonight, and I don't know if it's because of what happened or because I haven't eaten in two days."

I paused.

"My life is shit, Dan. That's the big secret."

The stars fell out of the sky for the second time that night. They were all streaking towards the ground, and I was worried that one might hit us.

Dan didn't say anything afterward. He hugged me, though. I was glad.

All my worries and fears, I could see them leaking out of my head. They filled up the whole damn sky, until they became clouds, and suddenly it was so dark that I couldn't see anything at all.

"You're allowed to cry," he said.

And I was about to tell him that I wasn't the crying kind, but I hugged him back instead.

"Sorry. I should have told you. It's just- I don't like talking about it because I don't want it to define me anymore, you know?"

He nodded a bit.

I felt like I was hollow. I felt like I was floating above the world, drifting through the air and through my heavy words.

"It doesn't, by the way."

I couldn't' really hear him. I was too far off the ground. And then he squeezed my hand, and I realized that he was drifting too. He'd always been drifting, I just hadn't noticed before.

"It's not your Dad or your home that matters, Phil. When people see you, they only ever notice the light."

"The light?"

"I can see it," he said. "It's shining through your skin and your eyes and your lips and it starts right here."

His hand brushed against my chest- right over my heart.

"If you ever feel empty, it's only because you're giving all your miracles away to other people."

I got one of those feelings just then- the ones that are impossible to explain. It felt like I was swallowing glass, it felt like there was an ache that started in my brain and dripped down to my heart, and it hurt so damn badly. But at the same time, I felt so damn alive, because he was right. Right then, I could feel it more clearly than anything else in my life. It was my entire body, possessed by light. It was my entire brain, blooming with dreams. Dan held my hand. His fingers were illuminated too.

And even though I knew that one day, these feelings would ruin me, I didn't care at all.

I hoped that I'd never get used to it, because that would snuff the lightning.

Before I knew it, the two of us were lying in the grass, staring at the sky. There were daisies around us.

I was counting the stars, which had magically reappeared above us. I was sort of crying at the same time, just a little bit.

"This is enough," I said.

Dan looked over at me.

"Being here- just the two of us together- it's enough for me. I don't really care about anything else right now, you know?"

He nodded.

"If I died right now, It wouldn't even matter. Does that sound crazy? It's just- my heart doesn't end in my body, it's everywhere and it's everything." I laughed a bit. "God, maybe I am crazy. I might be. But if I jumped into the air right now, I'm pretty sure that I'd start flying."

"I feel the same way."

He was speaking in words but I could only hear his feelings.

I laughed a bit and squeezed his hand. We stared up up up up up, at the bits of glass and dreams that were suspended over us. And he understood.

I looked at Dan, and I felt it again. It was both soft and sharp, and it was in my chest.

I wondered how someone like him- someone so lost and lonely- could do that.

That night, I'd found the home that I'd been searching for my whole life. And I found it in him.

\- - -


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Dan's old life and new life collide, with interesting results.

-dan-

Blue.

Blue like I'd never seen it before.

Phil smiled at me from across the table. I was helping him study for an advanced functions test, or I was trying to, anyway. I kept getting distracted by him.

Blue was my new favourite colour.

It'd been my favourite since that night with him- the one in the park. We'd been spending more time together since then. I sat with him at lunch, and he even gave me rides home when he could afford gas.

"Kid, what the fuck is an imaginary number?" Phil asked.

He was staring at a sheet of paper in front of him like it was a monster, while holding his head in his hands.

I rolled my eyes. "Phil, you've been going to class, right?"

"Yeah, totally," he said.

And then: "Usually."

And then: "Sometimes."

And then: "Not really."

I met his eyes for a few seconds, and then it was laughter. He was smiling like the sun was inside him, and I couldn't look away. Even under the fluorescent lights of the library, he managed to look soft.

Most people didn't notice that side of Phil- the roses that spilled from his lips and the ribbons that tied his heart to the world. Instead, they just saw the sharp angles and sharp words he put out on display.

And then: "Watching you two flirt, it's almost adorable."

I looked up, and the ribbons between us were cut. The roses around us had wilted. Miles Angolio- a grade eleven neanderthal- had just sat down next to me. Shit.

I swallowed thickly as he put a hand on my shoulder. Ice filled my veins. He was the textbook definition of a flower-killer.

Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.

I wanted to walk away. Or say something. Or do anything that wasn't just sitting there looking pathetic. The problem was that Miles was about ten billion feet tall. And made out of truck parts. And it looked like he regularly ate children.

My skin was paper, my bones were glass. I wondered how long I'd hold up before crumbling.

"What's new, twink?" he asked, giving my shoulder a little squeeze.

I hated the way Miles spoke more than anything else about him. He used such ugly words. People like Phil said 'shit' and 'damn' and stuff- Miles said 'pussy' and 'freak' and 'fag'.

I really hated that.

I looked over to Phil- silently wishing that he might say something- do something- so that I wouldn't need to. But he was just watching, his face blank. For once, we were both quiet.

"Look at me when I'm talking to you," Miles sneered, lifting my chin with his hand.

His eyes were a dull, flat brown.

He didn't let go after, that was the worst part. He kept his hand under my jaw so I couldn't look away. My cheeks were burning- I'd never wanted to get out of my skin more.

"Jesus-fuck. Would you leave him alone already?" Phil asked, his words made of storm clouds.

Phil, for the first time in a long time, was truly scary. Everything about him- from his voice to his eyes- looked like anger.

"Nobody asked for your input, faggot," Miles said, loudly enough for the whole room to hear.

I could feel the eyes of the entire library on us. I wanted to disappear.

"Just get your hands off of him, okay?"

Instead of letting me go, Miles just scoffed. "Would you look at that," he said. "The pansy has a fucking boyfriend now."

"Yeah, and so what if he fucking does?" Phil said sharply.

"It's just strange to know that someone- even as queer as you- could be interested in that freakshow."

Those words cut through the static of the room perfectly. They cut through everything. They cut through my skin and my veins and my heart, too. I started bleeding ice.

Everything started to happen really fast after that. Phil was on his feet, then Miles was up next.

It was just them, standing nose to nose, frozen in place.

Phil was holding Miles by the collar, and I swear I could feel the lightning that was pouring off of them. There was no air left in the library.

Phil said, very clearly, "You wanna say that again?"

Miles opened his mouth, and then closed it. More lightning. It was all I could feel. The whole damn world was watching.

And then Miles looked away.

"Just so we're perfectly clear," Phil said, his voice so sharp it could cut- and loud enough for everyone to hear, "you're no match for me."

Where I was expecting a punch, there was nothing.

Miles backed up as soon as Phil let go of him, and then it was over.

It was over.

I left the room after that. I didn't want him to see me cry.

As soon as I was outside, I was swallowed up by the sky. There was something in my eye- but I didn't know if it was snow or ash.

-

I was in a puddle of thoughts when Phil came out of the library. He dropped my bag- which I had left at the table- next to my feet. He looked tired. So freaking tired.

"Dan," he said quietly.

He sat down next to me, and I slumped against the wall. I wiped my eyes off on my sleeve for the millionth time that day.

"I'm fine," I mumbled. It was all I could manage.

Phil didn't say anything after that- he didn't really need to. He ran his thumb across my cheek, catching a tear. I felt my skin burning up under his.

"Does he bother you a lot?"

I didn't answer his question- I didn't need to. We both understood.

He just nodded.

"What you did with Miles" I mumbled. "You didn't need to do that."

All I could feel was that energy- that raw and terrifying energy- that had surrounded the two of them.

All I could see were all the different ways that it could have gone wrong, and all the ways that Phil could have been hurt.

But Phil just shook his head.

"You can't let people like that get away with things," he said softly. "Trust me, you need to stand up to them."

In that moment, I was blinded to the delicate, the exhausted side of Phil. All I could remember about him was that he got invited to parties, and that he had friends, and that he was never chosen last, and that he knew exactly how to talk to people.

And it made me so freaking angry, that someone like him could talk to someone like me about something like that- and act like he understood what it felt like.

"That's easy for you to say."

He raised his eyebrows.

"You're not allowed to talk like you understand what it feels like," I said sharply. "What the hell do you know about any of this?"

But Phil just laughed a little. His voice was bitter.

"I get it, Dan," he said softly. "Kids aren't the only ones who can give bruises."

And then it hit me.

It hit me over and over again- that sickening realization.

"The difference is, when I get hurt I don't get to show up at my huge house with my loving parents and all that," he said. "I show up at people's windows."

There were snowflakes falling from the ceiling, and they caught on my eyelashes. They caught on his, too. I wondered how on earth he could carry so many problems on his back and still manage to turn them into wings.

Phil sat there for a few seconds, and he looked more human than I'd ever seen before.

"The point is, kid, of course I had to do something. Whenever I see that shit happening, I see it happening to me all over again."

I leaned into him.

"Besides, I care about you."

Our conversation kind of ended after that. Someone had lit the air between us on fire. There were gaps and holes in our words where we didn't have anything to say- or where we already knew the answers.

Then I saw something brewing behind Phil's eyes- it'd been there since he left the library. It was like all the little bits and pieces that made Phil who he was- they were straining against each other. They were exploding out of him, but in such a quiet way that you had to hold your breath to notice.

"Thanks," I said after a moment. "I'm just not used to it- to people sticking up for me- I guess."

He nodded, and we breathed together for a while. My lungs were aching.

He wrapped an arm around my shoulders, and I pushed myself into him.

"Don't let them see that they're winning," he said, so quietly that I almost missed it.

And I realized that eating moonlight was the same things as eating glass- it still bruised my mouth.

"Hey, kid?" Phil asked a second later.

"Yeah?"

He paused, and then he smiled. His blue eyes were buzzing, looking more like the sky than the ocean.

"Do you wanna get some ice cream with me?"

-

By the time Phil stood up, he'd already buried all those vulnerable and human pieces of himself. He was back to being fidgety, he was back to being loud, he was back to being numb. I wished that I knew how to turn it all off like him.

"You coming?" he asked.

When I nodded, he grabbed my hand and pulled me to my feet. My hand lingered on his for a second.

The ice in my veins had been replaced with fire.

I held on all the way down the hall.

As soon as we stepped outside, I was hit by magic. The sky was a swirling mess of colour. We were a swirling mess of colour. His eyes were blue and his lips were pink and I felt like all the colours at once.

Blue was still my favourite colour out of all of them, though.

Phil put an arm around my shoulders after that. It didn't feel weird. Not even a little bit.

It felt like home.

We played stupid games the whole walk there. We hopped over the cracks in the pavement, we answered questions, and we smiled every time we looked at each other.

"Favourite memory?" he asked.

I shrugged. "You."

"You're such a freaking dork." He punched me in the shoulder and laughed a bit. "That doesn't count."

And even though I didn't say anything else, we both understood. He was my favourite memory. He might always be.

Phil ended up paying for our ice cream. He got chocolate mint, and I got strawberry.

I held his hand. And in that moment, I was sure- so freaking sure- that we'd always be like this.

That the years could spill by and the whole world would change but we wouldn't.

He had a little bit of ice cream on his nose. I laughed.

I felt very full. Full full full of warmth.

Because everything about him, and everything about us- it was new.

For as long as I could remember, if you dusted my heart for fingerprints, you would have found flowers and the moon hiding there. But there wasn't really anything alive in my chest back then- it was all just memories.

Until him.

In his presence, my heart was in bloom. And it's petals were so damn large that I couldn't feel anything else.

\- - -


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which two boys have another conversation.

-phil-

If I’d ever thought that Dan was adorable, he was nothing next to Dan-with-an-ice-cream-cone. 

And reckoned that there was probably nothing else that was quite as lovely as being next to him on that golden afternoon. We were sitting on the hood of my car in the student parking lot, and the whole world was drifting past us like clouds. 

“What time is it?” Dan asked. 

“Two-ish, I think.”

He looked up at me, and his eyes had gone wide. “I’m late for chemistry,” he said, wincing a little bit. 

I came very close to laughing after he said that. I leaned back until I was lying on the hood, with my legs hanging off the front. “How would you feel about being ‘late’ for the rest of the day?”  
I watched him carefully- and that was when I noticed the moonlight that was dusting his face.

“You can’t keep skipping like this,” Dan said softly. “God- now I understand how you’re flunking out of math.” His eyes crinkled up at the corners when he started laughing. 

“Is that a yes?”

Dan leaned back too, smiling, and then we were both staring at the sky together. There were leaves blowing through the air, and there was liquid sunlight draped over everything. 

“It depends,” he said. “What did you have in mind?”

I shrugged. “I found a box of street chalk in my garage last night.”

I closed my eyes after that, and drank in the sky. I wondered if the birds knew just how lucky they were, getting above everything like that. 

“So you want to drive around and draw stuff?” he asked. 

“No, I want to drive around and draw stuff with you.”

-

After we left, Dan didn’t say much. He was staring out the passenger window as he finished his ice cream, watching silently as houses and people passed. The radio was on, but it didn’t fill us with electricity, it filled us with flower petals. 

Dan was humming along quietly. 

Something about that trip- it was a little bit magical. But not the kind of magic that made a big deal out of itself. It was just us and the sky. That might have been the best part, how there weren’t any rules left. Somehow even the air felt sweeter than it had in the morning. 

I drove away from the school, then away from the busy streets, then away from the subdivisions, then away from everything, until we were on a dusty road in the middle of nowhere. 

When I parked the car, it wasn’t spectacular or anything. We were up on a hill, but there were only grassy farm fields to see- no big trees, no exquisite views. I think that was the point, though. 

We were the special bit, not our surroundings. 

I sat on the road. Dan sat next to me. We were leaning up against the side of the car, watching the sky again. Someone had set it on fire. 

Then he leaned into my shoulder, and the whole world became a little bit quieter. I could hear the clouds moving. 

“I used to come here with Spencer and Amelia all the time,” I said. “Whenever people were assholes, we’d lie in the field and watch the sun fade to nothing.”

“How’d you find it?”

“We got lost after a party, actually. Then my car broke down.”

He laughed a bit. 

I pulled the chalk container out of my bag and set it down in front of us. Dan grabbed a pink piece, and twirled it in his fingers. 

“Tell me a story,” he said, as he started drawing on the pavement. 

I grabbed a blue piece. “About what?”

He didn’t answer me at first, he was concentrating too hard on his drawing- it looked like a rose.

Dan shrugged. “What’s your dream job? Or what was it when you were little?”

“Believe it or not, I wanted to be a police officer.” I laughed a little. “I loved that idea- of being the good guy- and people looking up to me.”

“And you don’t want to be one anymore?”

I played with the rip in my jeans. I couldn’t tell if my fingers were blue because of chalk or worry. 

I looked away. “Sure I do. It’s just that people don’t really see me like that anymore.”

All he said was, “Oh.”

Then I broke my piece of chalk in half. “Now I’m realizing that they never really expected much from me. Even when I was little.”

He got all quiet again. “Really?”

“Same shitty house for all eighteen years- same shitty expectations.” I looked back at the ground. “When you live like that- y’know, in that part of town- people look at you a certain way. That’s why my mom, that’s why she left, I think. She was tired of it, even back then. So was my sister.”

“And you stayed with your father?”

I started to draw again. “It’s not like I had a choice, kid. They wanted things to be pretty, they wanted things to be perfect, and they wanted me to be somebody I wasn’t- somebody that I couldn't be.”

For a few moments, we went back to drawing. I’d drawn a heart- a blue one- and he’d drawn flowers upon flowers upon flowers. It wasn’t perfect- neither of us were artists- but I still wanted to walk inside of our drawings and forget about the real world. 

“Enough about me,” I said, sitting up straighter. “Tell me about you.”

Dan started out with a soft smile. 

“My life has been pretty straightforward, I guess. We’ve only moved once, and since then it’s been the same house, same family, same everything, I guess.” His smile became the slightest bit sad. “My dad and I don’t really get along anymore, though. I guess that’s changed- he doesn’t think I should like flowers.”

“Why not?”

“He’s worried about me, I think. He doesn’t want me to get hurt. He used to be more open with that kind of stuff, but that was awhile ago.” Dan shrugged. “He’s overprotective, is all. He doesn’t want to lose me too. That’s what my mom always says, anyways.”

“Lose you too?”

Dan looked away after that, like he realized that he’d said too much. There were sparks tangled up in his hair.

“I didn’t mean that,” he said quickly.

We were quiet for a few seconds, watching the grass. I could hear his thoughts quite clearly.

“Who was it?” I asked. 

He stared at the ground and dropped his chalk- his hands were shaking. He never answered me. 

“Were they- were you two close?”

He only nodded. 

After that, I saw the lights that made up his heart shine through his skin. He wasn’t happy- he was far from it, really. But he was remembering, and it lit up his chest with the colours of forgotten memories. It was Old-Happy mixed with New-Sad. 

And I remembered that beautiful things didn’t need to be cheerful. 

They just needed to make you feel something. 

“I don’t really remember that much about it- I was pretty little when it happened,” Dan said softly. “My brother and I were home alone together. We stayed outside for a long time that day, picking flowers and chasing fireflies. When it got too dark to stay outside, we told stories in his room, and I fell asleep first.”

I held his hand. It was shaking.

“My Dad woke me up later that night. He didn’t say what had happened, only that there had been an accident. He carried me to the car, then drove me to my grandparents' house.”

Dan took a moment to let a breath out and stare at the sky. 

“I can still remember when they came to pick me up the next morning, and how my mom was shaking so badly that she could hardly walk. I never saw, I never-” 

He just shook his head and looked back at the ground. 

There was so much light blooming from his chest- happy and sad- that it hurt my eyes. 

I put my arm around him, and pulled him closer to me. 

“Life is pretty shit, huh,” I said. 

He nodded. “Really shit.”

I laughed bitterly. “They always tell you that if you’re a good person then good things will happen. But it’s all bullshit, you know? Bad things happen to good people, too.”

Dan was concentrating very hard on the pavement. He wiped his eyes on his sleeve. 

“You’ll get used to it eventually,” I said. “I’ve been that kid from that side of town for as long as I can remember. And as soon as I stopped trying to change that, it didn’t hurt as much anymore when people walked away.”

Dan smiled a little bit- it looked like rain and roses.

“I don’t mind you being that kid,” he said. “I don’t mind at all.”

We took a moment to look at each other. He was a flower, just like always, but he was opening up for the first time- blooming for the whole world to see- and becoming so incredibly vulnerable in the process. 

I just smiled a little bit- matching his. “I’m really glad that you’re my friend.” 

He blushed, then paused, then frowned. 

"I just find it hard to believe sometimes," he said quietly.

In that moment, his skin turned into glass- and for a split second, I could see inside. He was a blooming flower, sure. But he was also losing petals when the wind blew.

"You find what hard to believe?"

He kept his eyes on the piece of chalk. His hands were shaking again, and I could tell why. I watched as all of his light pink petals were stripped away by the air- leaving his heart open and unprotected. 

"Why do you even like me?" he asked, as softly as he could.

There was a stunned silence for a few seconds. I tucked a piece of hair behind his ear. 

“I’ll show you.”

He stared at me blankly- completely oblivious. 

"You’re so damn clueless sometimes,” I said gently. “I was just thinking- wishing, really- that I'd be able to kiss you.”

\- - -


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which it finally happens.

-dan-

And as soon as Phil said that, the whole world stopped.

Everything froze.

There were only three things left in the entire universe:

1\. Our lips. 

2\. The space between them.

3\. And how he wanted to close that space.

"I was wishing the same thing," I said softly. My heart was so full that it didn’t leave any room for words. 

And then he kissed me. And then we both melted into light, and I felt emotions that I didn’t know the names for. 

I pried open my rib cage and left him to take what he would. He took my heart, and he held it in his hands. 

My. Entire. Heart. 

Phil pulled away before it went very far. It wasn’t perfect or anything- we were still clumsy and shy and awkward and-  
And I couldn’t get the smile off my face. 

“Fuck,” he whispered. “Fucking finally.”

I nodded my head until our foreheads knocked together. “More,” was all I said.

And then he was kissing me again. Kissing me just like warm summer rain.

And then my head wasn't my head anymore- it was daisies and daisies and daisies. They were blooming out of my neck, filling up where my skull used to be. All the daisies that I picked instead of arguments.

His lips felt like craters on the moon. 

And then Phil's head was gone too- it became stars and stars and stars. All the stars that he didn't walk with- they’d fallen down from the sky. 

We were melting into each other- melting into one. And we fit. We fit so damn well.

Stars and daisies together.

We paused for a moment, watching each other. I started to wonder how I’d ever survived without Phil's lips on mine- so I grabbed the back of his head and pulled him closer to me. And the daisies, they began sprouting from my very soul, too. 

What had once been soft kisses- like feathers and lace and whispers- they became something more. His hands were tangling in my hair and brushing against my jaw. And when he touched me, it burned. The traces on my skin, they left scorch marks. He whispered my name like it was some precious word. His lips were made out of fire and starlight. 

And I let myself smile into it. 

It was the kind that told me that I'd never been so happy before in my life, and I might never be again. 

There was light spilling out of his skin. And when I looked down, I noticed that there was light spilling out of mine, too. 

And for once, I knew what it felt like to be more than a placeholder for something more important than myself. Right then, plain old Dan was freaking spectacular. Before that moment, I'd forgotten what the sun looked like. It’d been out for so damn long. 

But when we were touching, the sun was back in the sky because we were the sun, we were the stars, we were the sky- we were everything in the whole damn world. 

We were stars and daisies together.

\- - -


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Dan has doubts.

-phil-

Maybe it was just my heart turning the world into an old movie, but when we finally stopped kissing, the rain looked more like colours than water.

I didn't want to leave. Dan didn't either. The rain was making our chalk drawings run together.

The walk to the car was quiet. The rain was getting heavier, and raindrops were soaking my hair and rolling down my cheeks. Dan's face was flushed- he looked like a brighter version of himself. When we drove away, all that was left of our visit were the swirling pink lines burning up the pavement.

Dan was staring out the window. His face was still dusted with peach. He was tapping his fingers on the dash.

"Do you actually like me?" he asked. His voice was back to being fragile.

A few years passed.

"What?"

The sky was getting washed away, leaving only the headlights to cut through the air.

"I just, I see the people that you hang out with. And they can actually keep up with you."

I frowned. Dan started doing that thing again- where he'd grip onto his sleeves until his knuckles turned white. Kind of like when I met him.

"Who says you can't keep up with me?"

Dan brushed some hair away from his eyes. He looked really small. "I'm just worried that I'll end up as another irrelevant person you've kissed to add to your collection."

"Kid. Come on. That's stupid. And I don't have a collection."

"How many people have you kissed?"

His words hung in the air, and the car filled with black smoke. I gripped the steering wheel a little bit tighter. I could feel how he was staring at me, and I could feel how much he was depending on my answer.

"That doesn't mean I have a collection, for fuck's sake," I said.

I could feel everything building up inside. And I realized that the black smoke was billowing out of my chest as well as his. For nearly a minute, there was this horrible tension strung between the two of us.

He didn't say anything after that. I didn't either. I pulled into a nearby parking lot.

I got out of the car first. It was still raining a little bit, but I didn't mind.

As the sky got darker, I could see the dim outline of the moon near the horizon. It got swallowed by the clouds.

I climbed onto the hood of the car, and Dan followed me. There two of us were lying up there for what felt like hours, staring at where the stars would have been. And for a moment, I thought that I wouldn't say anything at all.

I looked over at Dan. He was writing letters to the moon.

"Kid. I'm sorry, okay? You don't need to shut me out."

He looked up at me.

"For the record, I'm a better person when I'm around you," I said quietly. "You might not know this, but I've got a tendency to self-destruct when left to my own devices. I make shitty choices, I do stupid things, and I don't really take care of myself."

His face had started to open up again, and I could see the glimmer of stars peeking out from the inside.

I laughed thinly. "To tell you the truth, you're pretty much the only person in my life that makes me want to try again. And hell, none of my other friends can do that."

The black smoke between us started to rain away into nothing.

Dan slipped his hand into mine so that our fingers were interlaced. And even though it was dark out, Dan was glowing so brightly that I could see inside.

The rain started to thin out a bit, until it felt more like falling mist than anything else. I rolled over onto my side, and I watched as Dan's chest rose and fell softly.

My thumb was tracing patterns over the back of his hand.

He turned onto his side, so that he was facing me. There was a tiny gap between us, and it was full of butterflies or maybe even snow. "Where did you- where did everyone learn how to do it all?"

"Do what?"

The wind had started to pick up a bit. Dan moved in closer, so that we were pressed together. His head was leaning on my chest.

"When did you learn how to make people like you?" he asked. "And why didn't I?"

His eyes were shut. I kissed the top of his head, then I laughed a bit.

"There isn't some secret formula, kid. It's just practice. It's throwing yourself out of your comfort zone until you find a home there."

The last traces of colour were swept from the sky, until we were drowning in darkness. I couldn't even see Dan's face anymore.

But I could hear his heart beating, beating, beating.

"I want to try that one day," he said, so softly that I could hardly hear it. "Practice, I mean. I want to learn how to keep up with the other people in my life."

His voice cracked.

I wrapped an arm around him, so that my hand was resting on the small of his back. I pulled him in even tighter.

"I'm sick of melting into the background. I want to be something that people notice, something they care about," he said. His words were spilling quickly, like he'd been waiting for centuries to use them. "I want to do that at least once."

I closed my eyes. Dan's fingers were clinging to the fabric of my shirt.

"You should come out to a party sometime."

He nodded his head a little. "I'd like that."

We kept talking for about half an hour. Both of us got soaked to the bone.

When I dropped him off at his place, Dan kissed me goodnight. As the door shut behind him, I knew that I'd never get used to it.

I'd never get used to any of it, really. His eyes, his cheeks, his lips, his jaw, his hair- the sound of his voice, the way he smiled when he thought I wasn't looking, or even the way he found the strength to make himself vulnerable.

Most of all, I knew that I'd never get used to the way that he looked at me.

He was the one that made all of my other kisses irrelevant.

\- - -


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Dan goes to a party for the first time.

-dan-

Even the concept of it seemed laughable: Dan Howell going to a party with Phil freaking Lester. 

I never would have said yes, under normal circumstances. But when one of Phil’s friends had invited him over to ‘celebrate november’, Phil thought it was a great idea. And then when he asked me if I wanted to go with him, and I didn’t know how to turn him down.

Before I knew it, I was sitting next to Phil on some grubby couch, drowning under the dull throb of music, listening as he told some punk looking kid about the time he’d slept in a shed because he’d gotten lost. 

That was the thing about the party. It wasn’t like the ones I’d seen in movies or TV shows- it was more Phil’s crowd, I guess. Like regular people with the volume turned up. Some of them wore black with metal in their ears, some looked like they ate flower buds for breakfast, and some of them looked like they’d spent their entire existence falling from planet to planet without sticking anywhere. 

And then there was me. 

And I was just sort of there. 

I didn’t know how to tell Phil that I couldn’t reach the stars that all of them were dancing through. And I didn’t think that he’d hear me, even if I told him. 

The guy who was hosting the party- he was called Luke- came up to where the two of us were sitting about twenty minutes in. He was a lot more gangly than I remembered. And he looked a lot less cool under the faded basement lights. He gave Phil a high five, and then his face cracked into a smile. 

And I was just sort of there. 

“Lester! Phil, you crazy cat. What’s going on?” Luke asked. I was pretty sure that he was high. 

“Not that much,” Phil said. “You know my friend Dan, right?”

Luke shook his head, and then looked down at me for the first time that night. I was visible for a few short seconds, and he shook my hand. He smiled a bit, too. 

Luke looked back at Phil. “I’m on drinks tonight. You two want anything?”

The air suddenly became thick with anticipation. Like warm honey, or cough syrup. I doubted that my petal-lungs would be able to hold much more than a breath of it. 

“I’ll have a beer, please. Dan will-” 

Phil broke off, and looked at me. He raised his eyebrows, and I noticed that his eyes were quiet for the first time that day. I shook my head. “- He’ll just take a pop, thanks.”

Luke swayed in place for a second, and for a moment I thought he might tip over. He was nodding his head like some kind of overgrown daffodil. Then, he wandered back into the group of people scattered around the basement without another word.

Phil caught my eye. “You feeling okay?” he asked, just loudly enough for me to hear. 

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said. I paused, and looked at him. And then I started laughing. “Are you wearing freaking eyeliner?” 

Phil nodded, and kissed my cheek. “It’s a good look, right? I’ve been told that it brings out my eyes. It makes them sharp, piercing, colder than an antarctic sky in-” 

I kissed his lips that time, shutting him up. He smiled into it, just a little. 

-

For that first half-hour or so, I thought that it might actually be a good night. Sure, I couldn’t reach the stars- but when could I ever? At least, when I was sitting next to Phil, people seemed to notice me a little more than usual. 

They noticed Phil a lot. 

First it was just Spencer and Damien, who showed up late. They sat on the floor in front of us, laughing like it was oxygen. Everybody was a little bit giddy. I wrote it off as them being tipsy. 

And then more people started to join us: Luke’s girlfriend, some guy who was someone’s cousin, a girl who kept dancing in her chair, and a girl who was dating Damien. 

And then a few million others. 

And I was just sort of there. 

It’s not that any of them were bad people. I’m sure that they caught fireflies as kids and knew about the stars. And they were nice to me. Really, they were. But they were doing it for Phil’s sake, not mine. 

I was a glorified topic of conversation, not a part of the discussion. 

And with all of them there, and me on the outside, I could finally see how people acted around him. And how I probably acted, too. I could see how Phil changed since we’d gotten inside- since we’d gotten an audience.

He was the slightest bit louder than normal. He laughed more, too. And all of those beautifully bizarre people around him were buying it. They were all talking just as loud as him and drinking too much and getting stupid and playing along with the silly things he said and games he played- all falling in love with him. 

And I was just sort of there. 

Just watching as people flocked to Phil like moths to a flame, drinking up his easy company. 

And I realised that I was just another moth. 

All of those fucking beautifully bizarre people- they unlocked a part of Phil that he didn’t show me that often. The selfish, hilarious, unapologetic part. It was addictive to listen to, sure. But it also made me sad. 

And then Phil planted a kiss on my forehead, and I knew something was wrong. 

The words ‘Be right back, babe,’ caught my attention a little. 

And again, I could only watch as he stood up, and slapped some guy on the shoulder. They were laughing a lot. And then he was gone, and it was just me on that freaking couch. The people from before, they were still there- but I could see through them. 

Again, the air was starting to feel thick and sticky. Again, I had a hard time dragging it into my lungs. I was drowning in that damn room on that damn couch in my own damn skin. But this time, the boy who pushed me in- and the boy who could pull me out- was walking away. And those people- god, all those people, they were so loud. Drowning in my own skin. I had to get out of that room. Drowning in my own skin. I had to get out of myself. Drowning in my own skin. I had to- 

“You okay?”

I looked up sharply. It was Spencer- Phil’s friend- standing in front of me. I didn’t really know him, other than that he was nice to me when we hung out as a group. According to Phil, Spencer was a bit of a stoner who didn’t do that much. 

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, for the second time that night. 

He raised his eyebrows a little, but didn’t challenge me. “Where did Phil go?” he asked. 

I only shrugged. 

Spencer sat down next to me on the couch, where Phil used to be. “I know how that goes.”

 

“You do?”

“Phil disappears more than you’d think.” 

I took a sip from my drink, and scanned over all the beautifully bizarre people. They were starting to look more and more like people with cheap masks on, made to look like moonlight. We sat quietly for a moment- I guess that neither of us really knew what to say. The only thing we had in common was Phil. 

“I don’t mind that he ‘disappeared’ or whatever,” I said. “It’s just that I don’t really know anyone here. And now I don’t have anything to do until he gets back.” 

“Thanks,” he said thickly. 

I looked up at him. He tugged a hand through his dark hair. “You’re too cool to talk to a guy like me?” 

“Oh- no, god, I didn’t mean it like that, I was just-”

But Spencer was already laughing. I couldn’t help myself from smiling a bit. And then I was laughing, too. And the two of us- even though he was Phil’s friend, not mine- we felt the slightest bit closer. 

I doubted that he could quite keep up with guys like Phil or Damien, either. 

“I’m just messing,” he said. “By the way, I can give you a ride home if Phil flakes out. I haven’t been drinking tonight.”

“I can wait for him to get back.”

Spencer looked at me for a second, and there was something on his face that I couldn’t read. It wasn’t pity, exactly. 

It was recognition. It was nostalgia. 

“That’s what makes it so damn addictive,” he said quietly. I got the idea that he wasn’t joking at all anymore. “Hanging out with him, I mean. In the back of your head, you’re always wondering if this will be the last time.” 

“I’m not addicted to hanging out with him,” I said. 

“Cut the crap already, Dan. Everyone is. You saw him tonight, right?” 

And I remembered what it was like. And what he was like. 

I remembered seeing all of them, crowding for his attention. Drowning under the weight of his words. Sinking into the way he looked at people. And I knew that Spencer was right. 

“Are you?” I asked softly. “Addicted, I mean.” 

For a moment, it looked like he wouldn’t say anything at all. And then: “Since forever ago.”

I looked up at him. 

“I have been since he told some asshole to stop beating the shit out of me. I have been since that asshole listened to him.”

And right then, I got the feeling that there was more to Spencer than he let on. There was more life inside, more intelligence inside, and a lot more pain inside. The whole stoner kid thing he had going on, it was just on the surface. 

“Do you ever get sick of it?” I asked him, looking away so he couldn’t see my face. “Are you ever sick of how unreliable he is?”

“All the time.” Spencer laughed a little. “Of course I do, Dan. I mean, he’s a bit of an asshole, you know? But his heart’s in the right place. He gives a shit about people, even if he tries to keep it a secret.”

Spencer’s face had split open into honesty. All those things, all those insecurities he had, they seemed obvious. 

“Yeah,” I said thinly. “He’s an asshole sometimes, but he’s also one of the only people in my life who doesn’t think I look better with a black eye.” 

Spencer nodded quietly, then he reached over and ruffled my hair a bit. “You know, you’re a good guy, Dan.”

I sat there for a second, processing. 

It was gone in an instant. That softer, realer feel between us- it had evaporated. We sat together for another few minutes, but we didn’t say anything else. I guess that there wasn’t much else to be said.  
And then he said the same thing as Phil: “Be right back.”  
I watched him retreat into the sea of people, just like Phil had. And then I realised a few things. 1) Phil was not my babysitter. 2) Even if Phil came back, he still wouldn’t pay attention to me. 3) Even if I stayed all night, nobody else would, either.  
I sat there for a long time, watching watching watching. The room began to change after awhile. It melted until I saw people for who they were inside: as art instead of humans. Nothing was real anymore, I guess.  
Red swirls of paint decorated the flushed faces of all those people dancing and talking and swaying. They were vibrant, glowing like they were immortal. Spencer was an oil pastel drawing- scruffy and unfinished. Damien used an entire bottle of yellow paint for his hair, and a bottle of green for his eyes. Across the room, a girl smiled at a girl she liked. Her lips were too red. And they started kissing, their colours blending into white. The whole room was splattered with light and magic and energy. 

And then there was me. 

And I was just sort of there. 

Whoever had painted the scene had forgotten to colour me in. They’d poured the rest of the paint down the sink, and I watched as it ran down the drain. All the pink and blue and white and yellow and green and red and purple and orange: it was washed away. 

I stood up to find Spencer again, my feet sinking into the heavy brush strokes that made up the carpet. I guess that the whole thing was stupid, anyway. I never could have fit. 

I never could have been enough to keep Phil’s attention in a place like that. 

I wasn’t enough to keep anyone’s attention. 

As I waded through the room, all the gobs of paint- bright and colourful- left me behind. I caught Spencer’s arm. 

“Could you give me a ride home?” I asked quietly. 

He only nodded, and I didn’t notice the yellow flowers blooming from his fingertips. 

When I thought about all those people- the ones with primary colours in their brains- I wondered what they thought about me. And I wondered what Phil thought about me. I wondered if they noticed that I was unfinished. And I wondered if the reason Phil left- if it was to get away from my shaky pencil lines, towards something a little more interesting.

After all, I was just a sketch that had fallen out of the notebook. And he was a fucking masterpiece. 

\- - -


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which two boys have a conversation, and in which Phil starts to understand.

-phil-

The party was raw adrenaline, just like always. It was energy, it was lightning, it was fast paced everything. It was a buzz that turned into a roar that turned too loud for much other than laughing. That was my favourite kind of place. It made me feel alive.

It kept me distracted. 

Maybe I got carried away.

When I left Dan alone, I didn’t think that it would be a big deal. Maybe I didn’t think at all. But when I saw him going for the door- collapsing in on himself like he was made of sand- I knew that I’d fucked something up. 

“Kid! Dan- hey!” I shouted over the music. 

Either he didn’t hear me, or he ignored me entierally. I went after him, shoving through people like tall grass. Dan shut the door behind him. 

I paused for a moment, my hand on the knob. And I thought I was going to turn around. I thought I was going to lose myself in the intoxicating glow of the evening, burning through life until my smoke curled from my fingers. 

But with every second that passed, laughter was leaving a bitter taste in my mouth. 

When I stepped outside, the night was cooler than I remembered. The air was sweet, and the whole world was quiet, other than the music leaking out through open windows. 

Dan was standing on the top step of the porch with his back to me, staring down at the street below us. It was deserted. 

“Hey, kid, c’mon. Slow down. Where are you going?” I asked. 

When he turned to face me, I realised that I’d really fucked something up. His face was flushed, and close to breaking. His hands were curled into fists. 

“Home,” Dan said quietly. “Spencer’s giving me a ride in a minute.” 

I sat down next to where he was standing, my legs sprawled over the steps. “At least tell me what’s wrong first, okay?” 

Dan looked at me, and then slumped down so he was sitting a few feet away. His arms were crossed, and he was leaning up against the railing. “I just don’t want to be there anymore.”

And I noticed: he was making himself small again, just like he used to. 

“Tired or something?” I asked. 

He shook his head. “No, I mean I don’t want to be there. I don’t want to sit and watch other people have fun. I came here to be a part of something, not to bother you or-” 

“You aren’t bothering anyone,” I said. 

It stung a little bit- how easily he said it. 

Dan just rolled his eyes. “Yeah, tell that to all the people who fucking ignored me. All they cared about was sucking up to you.” His fingers were tapping on his leg, like he’d been filled with some kind of electricity. In the pale light, I could almost see sparks spilling from his skin.

“Are you actually mad at me?” I asked. 

“Yeah.”

Again, I paused. It became obvious, just how freaking close he was to snapping. 

He looked down at his shoes. “I don’t want to be mad- it’s not like it’s your fault or anything, it’s just that-” 

Dan reached over, slowly, and grabbed my hand. His fingers were trembling, and I got the idea that he was scared of talking to me. There were a few moments of nothing. And then, all of the soft, sad things bubbled up out of his chest, and spilled onto the ground in front of me. 

“I’m mad because I wanted to spend time with you,” he continued. “Because I wanted to hang out like we always do. But when you’re around all them, it’s like you’re a different person. A person who doesn’t care about me. You turn into a freaking asshole, Phil. Wearing eyeliner and screaming and acting like some idiot. And I was just there. Did you honestly think I could fit in? With people like you?” 

I swallowed. 

Somehow, we were still holding hands. 

His hands felt like ice. 

I wondered if my hands were burning him.

“You know, I never asked you to be quiet, Dan. I was loud, but that doesn’t mean you weren’t allowed to talk,” I said. My voice was as sharp as glass. “You can leave if you want to. But don’t assume that everyone here hates you- or that you were some kind of ‘burden’- because that’s bullshit. I want you here. They want you here.”

Dan let go of my hand, and he stood up. 

“I want you to stay,” I said quietly.

And then that last little part of him cracked wide open. 

“I’m just not used to it,” he said. “I’ve hung out with people like this- like you- before. And it’s usually a prank or- or it’s pity, and then they get bored of me. And I’m alone again.”

I didn’t say anything to that. 

I just hugged him. Tighter than tight. I think his feet came up off the ground a little bit. 

“You aren’t small, Dan freaking Howell,” I whispered. “You are fucking spectacular.”

Right after I let go of him, he kissed me. 

Then I walked Dan home. 

Our fingers were interlaced the whole time. 

The sky was cloudy and dim. Somehow, I could still see the stars above us. And that time, both of our hands were made out of fire. 

When we were still a block or so away from Dan’s place, he kissed me goodnight. “I can walk from here,” he said. “Besides, my dad would flip if he saw you.” 

I nodded. “Have a good night.”

He kissed me again, his hands draped around my waist. 

And even when my eyes were shut, I could still see all the damn stars in the sky. 

I watched him walk all the way back to his place. I watched as the door to his fairy-tale house opened, and his Dad looked down at him. I watched as Dan didn’t turn around again. I watched as the stars went out after he was gone. 

\- 

The rest of my walk was cold in comparison. 

Still, the adrenaline from the night carried me all the way home. I don’t think my feet even touched the ground once. 

The world smelled like wild, pink roses. 

Our door was already open when I got there. I kicked my shoes off, and went into the kitchen. I was smiling, humming, drinking in the night. I started to make myself a milkshake, I started to think about going to bed. And then I realised. 

It wasn’t even eleven. The car in the driveway, the open door- they shouldn’t have been there. 

Those pink roses in the air. They were infectious; intoxicating. They were too sweet. 

As soon as I figured it out, it all sort of flatlined. I could hear the dull flicker of the TV coming from the next room over, I saw his briefcase strewn on the ground, I saw the dishes piled up in the sink. 

And all of my feelings- all of my hope- started to slip out the open window. 

I wasn’t an idiot, after all. I’d seen it before. 

He’d lost another job. 

My Dad had lost another fucking job. 

I went upstairs as quietly as I could. For a moment, I considered going in there- talking to him, maybe. And then I thought better of it. I locked my bedroom door behind me. 

I shuffled through the mess of records on the floor, chose the loudest one I could. I tried to drown out the stars. 

Drown out my head. 

I ended up lying on my back, only the floor beneath me. I had to keep breathing. I had to keep dragging air into my lungs. The ceiling became transparent, and I could see planets colliding in the sky. And I swear, I could see how our house would inevitably collapse, too. 

Even when the music stopped, the world was loud enough that I hardly noticed. 

I didn’t sleep much that night. 

\- - -

an/

what are you guys thinking so far?


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Dan decides to hit the Play Button on his life.

-dan-

As soon as my dad opened the door for me, the world switched to black and white. 

The whole party experience- all those colours, noises, feelings- seemed very far. All I could see was my dad standing in front of me, a million feet tall and filling up the doorway. 

“Dan,” he said quietly. “Why don’t we talk in the kitchen?” 

Shit. 

I shrugged, swallowed, nodded, walked in the door. Inside the house, the world wasn’t even black and white anymore. It was just black.

“Hi, Dad,” I mumbled, kicking my shoes off. 

The air between us was cold. His grey eyes were unreadable. It hardly needed to be said: the two of us didn’t get along as well as we used to. 

It’s not that my dad was mean or anything- or that he didn’t love me. But he’d always been that guy. The attractive kid on a hockey team or a football team, then into college, then into the military, then married. 

And I spent most of my spare time pressing flowers. 

A minute later, and we were sitting on opposite sides of the kitchen table. I sat stiffly, the chair biting into my back. My fingers were drumming on the table, filled with nervous electricity. 

“Is there something that you want to tell me?” he asked. 

His voice was as cold as ice. 

“Dan?” 

His eyes were colder than ice. 

“I went to a party,” I said after a moment. His hair had more gray in it than I remembered. 

There was a pause. 

And then my Dad smiled. 

He smiled.

He freaking smiled. 

Even more surprising: 

“I was around your age when I went out to my first party, you know.” 

I was frozen for a moment, just watching him. 

“You were?” 

He nodded, leaning back a little bit in his chair, and abandoning that always-perfect military posture. 

He was acting so completely unlike himself. It was like I walked into the wrong house. The kind of house where parents and kids just sat down together and had conversations for the hell of it. 

Somehow, by going to this freaking party, I’d become visible to him for the first time in years. 

“Actually, that was the night that me and my friends tried drinking for the first time,” he said. “Did you- have you?”

It took me a second to figure out what he was asking. 

And it took me another second to decide that I’d lie to him. 

“I did just a little bit,” I said hurriedly, the words feeling tight in my throat. “I had two beers.” 

And he leaned back in his chair some more, and he laughed. 

He laughed. 

He freaking laughed. 

And in that second, time rewinded for him. I could see the guy he used to be when he was my age: his hair was brown, not grey. And his eyes were full of so much more than they were now. He was the kind of guy to go on adventures at night with his friends, and the kind of guy who got what he wanted just because he was that damn likeable. 

And that guy wanted to be my friend because I was also that guy. 

The way he was looking at me filled me with pride. And warmth. And all the things I never expected to feel when I was around him. I was almost angry at myself, for how good it felt to get his approval. 

“And this party- were there any girls there?”

And again, there was a pause. 

I knew what I had to do, to make him fall in love with me again. I was supposed to tell him yes, that there were girls, that I kissed one, that I had a good night. And then he’d probably laugh a bit more, smile a bit more, and I’d going to bed being his son again. 

But the words got stuck in my throat before I could tell him. After all, I was Dan freaking Howell. 

I was too sensitive, I was scared of the dark, I was scared of parties. I liked flowers, I liked quiet, I liked boys. I had petals instead of eyelashes. People usually couldn’t see me. 

And I wasn’t that guy, as much as he wanted. As much as I wanted. 

“There were girls. But I didn’t really talk to any of them.”

And the words that were burning in my chest just spilled out in front of me after that:

“I’m gay.”

The words hit the kitchen table. 

They didn’t shatter or anything, though. They just sat there, hanging between us. 

“Oh,” he said. “Oh. Right, okay.”

And then my Dad stood up, and all of that bullshit military posture was back in him. His hair was back to being gray, his face back to being lined. 

He got a glass of water. 

And after almost a minute:

“Dan- you know I love you, right?” 

I nodded my head a fraction of an inch because that was what I was supposed to do. 

But I heard the way his words came out all scrunched up, like they were caught in his throat. 

We were a hundred miles apart. 

“I’m going to bed,” I said quietly. 

Again, he nodded. 

“Sleep well.”

He couldn’t see me as I left the room.

I felt myself drift into dust. 

I wasn’t sure if he’d ever see me again. 

-

The next morning, it took me almost a full minute before I remembered what had happened with my dad. For those first few seconds, the only thing in my brain was the idea of pressing some more lavender, and maybe hanging up some of my roses. 

Then I heard the front door shut- probably my dad going to work- and it all came flooding back, filling my head with photo albums of the two of us, until there wasn’t any space to think about anything else. 

I spent a minute or two trying to distract myself, but all I could hear were the words which were still sitting on the kitchen table. 

I’m gay. 

And I wondered: why did it have to be right then. Right when we were so freaking close to getting along. 

Of all the stupid things to do. 

I wondered if my dad was bothered by the way he left things between us. I wondered if he’d spoken to my mom about it.

The phone was shaking in my fingers as I dialled. The line between Phil and I crackled, and then I heard his breathing on the other end. 

“Phil,” I said. 

“Is this Dan?”

“Yeah.”

I could hear him smiling through the phone. Tiny snowdrops were blooming between us, their leaves bright green. I smiled too, somehow safe. 

“What’s up?”

There was another crackle of silence, and I fiddled with my hands a bit. 

“I need to talk to you. Can I come over to your place?” 

I listened as his smile stopped, and as the snowdrops wilted.

“Not to my place, at least right now,” he said quietly. “How about that diner on Fennel street instead?” 

“That’s fine,” I said. 

I held the phone to my chest for a few seconds, and it almost felt like he was there in the room with me. He said something else, but I didn’t hear him. 

I hung up after that. 

As I was staring at the ceiling, I could only wonder when the flowers had wilted in his home. 

I wondered if there were any words sitting on his kitchen table. 

-

The little diner was cute. Pink walls, red and white checkered floors, white tables. When I got there, Phil was waiting at a booth next to the window. He was leaning on the table, his head in his arms. 

“Phil,” I said softly. 

He grinned when he saw me, starlight dusting his face. His cheeks were rosy, his hair messier than usual, and his eyes were a little bit red. Either he’d been smoking weed, or he’d been crying. 

“Hey, kid, what’s going on?” 

I took a moment, I took a deep breath. And then:

“I came out to my dad last night.” 

I’d caught Phil off guard. That dizzy, dreamy look slid off his face in an instant. “Shit- are you okay?” 

I nodded, and sat down in the seat across from him. 

“What happened?”

 

I looked down at the table, and spent a second counting the number of spilled sugar packets. My hands were shaking again. “He didn’t really react, I guess. But he said that he loved me.” 

“Is he-?”

 

“No, not homophobic,” I said quickly. “But the fact that I’m gay- it’s just another thing that we don’t have in common anymore, I guess. And there wasn’t much there to start. All we really have left is that we both love my mom.” 

Phil nodded. He grabbed my hand across the table. 

“Sorry.” 

We were like that for a little bit, still and quiet, until the little bell on the door rang. Phil’s friends- Damien, Spencer, Amelia- came stumbling in, laughing about something. 

Phil swore under his breath. “I didn’t ask- I forgot to tell you,” he mumbled. “I can tell them to leave if it’s too much.” 

I shook my head as they arrived. A distraction was probably best, anyway. 

Two minutes later, and the five of us were crammed in the booth together. There was a huge plate of fries in the middle of the table.

Amelia looked at the two of us, then at our hands (which were still intertwined), then back at us. “What’s this?” she asked quietly. But there wasn’t anything sharp in her voice. The words didn’t sit on the table, they were just words. 

“Dan just came out to his dad,” Phil said. “Also, we’re dating.” 

He said it like it was an afterthought, but I practically burst into flames. 

We’re dating. 

“Dating,” Damien mused, a smile playing on his lips. “And it isn’t even December yet. That means you owe me twenty, Spence.” 

Spencer groaned, and leafed through his wallet, passing Damien two tens. 

Phil started laughing. “You fucking bet on us?”

Damien laughed too, and nodded. Phil punched him in the shoulder, but in a happy way.

“Wait. Are you telling me they like each other?” Amelia asked, her blue eyes wide. “Since when?”

“Are you serious? Since ever,” Spencer said. “Since the beginning of time. Have you heard the way Phil talks about him?”

“Hey, I don’t talk about him that much-”

“‘I met this really cute kid outside today. He had brown eyes and a nice smile.’ Blah blah blah, I never heard the end of it,” Damien said. 

And I saw that side of Damien that Phil saw. Even though his words were sharp like glass, his eyes stayed soft the whole time. 

There were a few more seconds of that. Everyone was laughing and punching and throwing french fries and cheap insults. And I feel my cheeks burning up because Phil just said that we were dating, and nobody seemed to care all that much. It’s like they were happy for us. 

Damien looked at me after that, his face suddenly serious. “Did things with your dad go okay?”

I nodded. 

“So you’re okay?” Amelia asked. 

I nodded again. She pulled a buttercup out of her hair and tucked it behind my ear. And then I smiled, because she saw me. Because all of them could see me. 

It was almost funny. How easy they made those things that used to eat me alive. 

\---


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Dan realises that he isn't in wonderland.

-dan-

I never knew quite how to describe the two of us. 

I guess that being with Phil made me feel blue. But it was a bright blue, clearer than the sky. The world kind of melted into a dream when I was with him. 

And at first, after he told his friends about the two of us, everything was rose coloured and sweet. We walked through school holding hands, he kissed me outside of my math class, and he was smiling more than I’d ever seen. 

And then, a few days later, the world woke up. 

I guess it was stupid, really. Thinking that it would last forever. Thinking that we were safe in wonderland. 

Before I knew it, the roses had faded to grey.

It happened on the sixth day after he told them. The school hallways were busier than usual, so I didn’t see that something was wrong until we got closer to my locker. I saw the people crowded, cramped around it, and I got that sinking feeling in my stomach. The air was strung tightly with anticipation. 

At first, I thought my eyes weren’t working right. They couldn’t be. 

A locker- my locker- wasn’t pale white anymore. It was decorated with black ink, scrawled in big block letters: 

FAG

My hand slipped through Phil’s fingers, and hung limply at my side. 

I stood there for a second, watching. And all of those people were watching me. Some of them laughing, some of them quiet. 

All of the air in the room disappeared. Or maybe all of the sound did. 

Phil was telling people to “fuck off already,” but his words sounded more like heavy water. 

And it was just the two of us left after that. 

He was saying something to me, his voice soft. Because I was delicate like glass. Because I had a personality more fragile than the flowers I pressed. Because he was worried that I’d shatter into a million pieces. 

When I didn’t answer, he grabbed my hand again, more firmly than before, and pulled me out of the school. 

We stood in the parking lot for almost a minute, the wind blowing through me. 

And he was speechless. 

Phil freaking Lester, who could make the stars collide. 

Phil freaking Lester, who made people fall in love with the world. 

Phil freaking Lester, who took all the problems on his back and turned them into wings. 

He was fucking speechless. 

And then that last little piece inside of me snapped. 

After that there was lava bubbling up in my throat, in my chest, in my lungs. It didn’t take long for me to erupt, detonate, explode. 

Maybe that’s why boys weren’t supposed to be made of glass. 

And then my hands were pounding on his chest and I was shouting at him and I was pushing his hands away and I was struggling against him and I was burning holes right through the dark and I was burning holes through my own mind and I was throwing fire and I was screaming starlight. It just wasn’t fucking fair that it was always fucking me. 

And then Phil grabbed both of my shoulders, his fingers quiet, eyes quiet. 

And I collapsed into him. 

And he was holding me. The rest of the world was irrelevant. 

\- - -


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which two boys have in a conversation, this time in a parking lot.

-phil-

The two of us were frozen in place, waiting.

I was still holding onto Dan, and his hands were still clinging to the fabric of my shirt. Rain had started to fall, and it felt like it was cutting through my skin. Dan was silent, and so was the rest of the world, except for the wind.

"Hey," I said, after a few minutes of nothing. "Dan?"

He let go of me, and sank to the ground. He tugged his knees close to his chest.

"You okay?"

Dan looked up at me, his eyes still puffy and red from crying. "Are you joking?"

I sat down next to him. Again, I didn't really know what to say to him. The whole sky was grey, clouds swirling above us.

Even his eyes seemed grey.

"Listen, Dan, do you have any idea– do you know who did this? Because I swear to god that I'll–"

"You don't have to do anything," he said. His words were shaky. "I'm used to it. It's okay."

"Used to it," I said softly.

Dan looked away, his eyes trailing the pavement. He crossed his arms over his chest, squirming a bit. I got the idea that he didn't mean to tell me that. That he'd meant to keep it a secret.

"Used to it."

He kept staring at the ground, avoiding my gaze. Like he was scared of me. Like he was scared of what I might think.

"It's not– it's never been this bad before, I mean," he said, his words rushed and clumsy. "But there have been these, like, notes, I guess. Shoved in my locker between classes."

There was a sharp tug in my chest, like my insides were being licked by a flame.

He shrugged, scratched the back of his neck, looked away. "They got less creative as time went on. Repetitive. Like fag and pansy and stuff."

There was a fire burning in the pit of my stomach.

"When did it start?"

"Last year. Around spring, I guess. But it didn't get bad until I started hanging out with you," he said. There was another pause, and then he met my eyes. "Whoever it is– whoever's doing this– they don't want us to be friends."

Little things started to click in my head after that. It was no wonder that he asked me why we were friends.

"Shit," I said. "Why didn't you tell me?"

And why didn't I see?

After all, I was falling for a kid who pressed freaking flowers in his spare time.

I should have known something was up.

Dan's face was closed off, and all the shutters were locked. "I don't need you playing superman all the time."

"No, Dan, that isn't how this works," I said. I could feel everything building up inside. "You can't just keep all of these things to yourself–"

"Oh that's rich. Especially coming from you," he mumbled. And then he met my eyes, and all I could see were storm clouds.

"What are you talking about?"

His eyes were sharp, just then. "I know that there's something going on with you, Phil. Something big, something you aren't telling anyone about–"

"Shut up."

"You're always acting like it's fine, like everything's great. But I'm not blind, and I'm not an idiot. It's something at home, right? With your dad."

"Shut up, Dan."

I didn't notice that my hands were fists until my nails started biting into my skin.

"He isn't a bad guy," I said, my face hard, tight. "And you don't know what the fuck you're talking about. It isn't his fault. It isn't anyone's. He just gets carried away sometimes."

And Dan was still staring at me, and I could hear all those stupid questions coming, the ones he was inevitably going to ask. The ones that everyone asked.

"I started taking the city bus home from school when I was twelve." The words were bitter in my mouth. "Because sometimes, when he picked me up, he was manic to the point where other kids could tell. His eyes were too bright and he was all jumpy and wired. And I didn't want to be known as that kid with the crazy dad anymore."

Dan leaned his head on my shoulder, and I let him.

"Notes in your locker is something that can be fixed," I said slowly. "But telling you about my shitty life isn't going to make anything better. It's not going to keep him from kicking me out again. It's not going to make Damien's floor any more comfortable to sleep on."

I stopped talking for a second, and Dan didn't push it. I looked up at the sky, and noticed that the rain had turned to snow. It was the first time it had snowed all year, and the flakes were puffy and white. They were settling on my skin, then melting into nothing.

I bit my lip, then let the words spill. "Look. I know I'm lousy at talking about these things. And I know I don't ask for help when I should. I'm just tired of being that pathetic basket case people feel sorry for."

The words had come out all thick and choked. I wiped my eyes off on my sleeve.

There was another long pause, and his hand found mine, our fingers tangling. I could see him thinking, considering, calculating what to say to me. I could see the snow falling around us.

"Why are you allowed to feel sorry for me, then?" Dan asked, his voice small.

"Because you let them walk all over you."

He pulled his hand back from mine. "No, I don't."

"Yes, Dan. God. Yes, you do. You think it's okay to make yourself small for people– to cut yourself down for the convenience of others."

He was fiddling with his fingers, his hand strangling his wrist. "What's wrong with that?"

I looked away, finding my words. I watched as sparks started to spill from my skin, I watched as they hit the ground.

"It's like burning artwork, Dan. It's like pouring paint down the drain," I said.

I could tell that he was listening to me, finally.

My voice was shaking pretty bad. "You don't deserve all this shit that happens to you. You don't deserve it. And you're acting like it's fine, like it doesn't matter. Like you don't matter."

He looked at me, eyes quiet.

And then I met his gaze, and everything just spilled over the edge.

"Dan, I–"

But I stopped myself before I said it.

My words got lost in the snow.

I hoped that he would understand what I was trying to say, regardless.

\- - -


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a beach day before the end of the world.

-Dan-

The afternoon was cold and dry. There were wisps of snow, still Dancing in the air, still fluttering past my window. 

Spencer’s black truck pulled into my driveway a little after ten in the morning. I didn’t quite know what to make of it. He knocked at my door, and asked if I had an empty afternoon. 

I nodded, grabbed my coat, followed him out the door. 

“What’s going on?” I asked him. 

“I think we’re going to the beach.”

“It’s December.”

Spencer shrugged, and climbed into the car. “I didn’t say that we were going swimming.”

He pulled out of the driveway quietly, and I looked at my hands. I could almost feel the way he was holding his breath, his eyes missing mine on purpose. I could almost feel how everything was building up, how everything was getting ready to fall.

“Spencer, what’s going on?”

There was a short pause. When he finally answered, his words sounded numb. 

“It’s Phil,” he said. “He’s feeling down again– he won’t tell anyone why, either. Amelia wants to get him out of the house.”

I nodded. My eyes were wide, sharp. 

Somehow, I doubted that Phil had told Spencer what he’d told me in the parking lot. I doubted that he’d told anyone else at all. He was too sickeningly proud. 

We were stopped at a read light. Spencer’s fingers were gripping the steering wheel so hard that his knuckles were white. And that’s when I noticed it for the first time:

That Phil wasn’t the only one who was feeling down again. And I wondered how it’d taken me so long to see.

“What’s wrong?” I asked him. 

“With Phil?”

“With you.”

He pretended that he hadn’t heard me. His eyes were locked on the road, his hands locked on the wheel. Except his breath had caught in his throat, and I’d noticed. 

“It’s not like I’m going to tell anyone,” I said quietly. “Or like I even have anyone to tell.” 

Spencer nodded his head. There was colour high in his cheekbones, there were flowers blooming under his skin. He was quiet, and his fingers were tapping on the steering wheel. 

The car was filling up with white noise, with tension, with anticipation– and then:

“I’m in love with Amelia.”

Oh. 

“I didn’t think– I didn’t know that you two were–”

“We aren’t,” he said.

His voice wasn’t bitter, exactly. It was just tired. 

“We aren’t anything.” 

I didn’t say anything else for the rest of the drive. I don’t think he noticed. 

-

The beach was smaller than I expected. 

Waves were pounding up on the shore, beating into the pebbles. The sky was overcast. 

Amelia and Phil were already waiting for us when we got there. The two of them were sitting on the hood of his car, talking quietly. They stopped when they saw us pull up. 

Phil smiled when he saw me, but it looked tighter than usual. Like something inside him had burst open. He slid off the car, and kissed my head. 

“Hey,” he said, a little too softly. 

“Hi,” I answered, a little to quickly. 

We were the puppets and the strings at the same time. 

The four of us ended up climbing into the back of Spencer’s truck. Amelia brought about ten blankets for us to share. They were made of scratchy red wool. It was a quiet afternoon. 

We played truth or dare, which ended up being truths. When Phil asked Amelia who she liked, and she said nobody, I pretended not to notice how Spencer looked away. When Phil kissed me so hard I went blind, I pretended not to notice how sad he was. 

It was a nice day. Really, it was. 

We laughed a lot. We were sitting in a shitty car wrapped in shitty wool blankets telling cheap jokes for cheaper laughs. And somehow, it kept the rest of the world at bay. Right then, if it had started raining, the water wouldn’t have touched us. 

Because we couldn’t be touched by anything. 

I later learned that it’s always like that. 

It’s always a nice day before the sun crashes into the earth. 

-

We were standing on the pebbles, waving goodbye to Spencer and Amelia, who were driving home together. Phil watched as they left– his face was strung tight with something I didn’t know the name for. 

“Phil,” I said softly, once we were alone. “Are you–”

“Don’t do this,” he said, his words clipped. “I don’t want to talk. I just– I want something good, something to make me forget about everything that’s going on.”

He turned away for a second, his eyes facing the water. 

“I can be something good,” I said. 

And even though he was sad, I could still tell that nothing was as pretty as us. The way he stepped inside of me, the way he got into my veins.

Phil rummaged in his coat pocket, and pulled out a shitty looking disposable camera. 

“What’s that for?” I asked him. 

“It said on the box it could take 27 photos.”

“So?”

He smiled, ran his fingers through his hair. “I need to try it out.”

The snow was falling heavily, then. Flakes were getting tangled in my eyelashes, getting tangled in my brain. When he took the first photo, I was still looking at the ground. 

“Is that really your best pose? Come on, Dan. Give me something to work with here.” 

I laughed, and he took another one. 

Words were bubbling out of him then, his face bright. “Look to your left a bit. No- your other left. Give me some profile.”

I was blushing and he could tell. I heard the camera click. I heard his smile. 

“Look at me this time.” He was laughing again. “But actually smile! I want to see your freaking dimples!”

And I did. 

His eyes were bright- maybe too bright- and he looked happier than usual. Maybe he just wanted to look that way. 

“How long have you been interested in taking photos?” I asked him. 

“Since I wanted to remember what a pretty boy looked like.” 

I met his eyes, trying to find something real in them. Trying to find some truth in the stars. 

“I’m not going anywhere.”

He stepped closer, and his hand found mine. I could still feel the starlight beneath his skin. There was a fire between us, burning through the unsaid words. I watched them drift up in smoke, I tried read them. 

“Three pictures left,” he mumbled. 

I was staring at our hands when he took the next photo. Then he turned the camera, and took one of the two of us. Then he looked at me. His eyes were blue and filled with fire. 

And when we touched . . . somewhere, a bird learned to fly.

In the end, he was like a flower. Blooming so widely, and with so many petals, that the stem was starting to snap. We were counting down the seconds before the world ended but oh god, it didn’t matter anymore.

We were kissing when the camera fell out of his hands and into the snow. 

\- - -

an///

new chapter coming on the 3rd

what did you think?


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which dan can only sit there and watch.

-dan-

After the beach, our world didn’t actually end for another six days. 

And I didn’t even notice how he was crumbling. 

All week, I went to school, not seeing the sun coming for the earth. I drove home with Phil, not noticing the grenade pin clutched in my fingers. I laughed with him, not seeing the bags under his eyes. 

It finally started on a Friday afternoon, at about ten in the morning. I was walking to my second class of the day– I had a big test coming up– when I heard Phil shout my name. I turned, and saw him running down the hallway towards me, electricity falling from his fingers. 

“Hey,” I said, when he caught up with me. “What’s going-”

Phil kissed me before I got the words out.

Then he grabbed my hand, tight, and we were running together. His fingers were steady in mine as we shoved through the people in front of us, tearing up the ground beneath us. 

Some of his lightning was slipping into my veins. 

We ran for almost a minute, until Phil found an empty classroom. He picked the lock on the door, and shut it behind us. We sat on the ground, our backs pressed up against the wall. 

“Are you okay?” I asked him. 

He nodded. 

“So all that running and stuff-”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said quietly. His chest was still heaving. Then Phil looked over at me, and his fingers found mine again. 

He traced his thumb over the back of my hand. 

“Are we hiding from someone?” I asked. “You can tell me if we are. Or did you– did you hurt someone? Are we–”

“It’s nothing like that,” he said. And for the first time, I noticed how hollow he was, how tired he was, how thinly he’d been stretched. “I just want this feeling to last.” 

“To last before what?”

“Before I leave the room . . . and the world starts again.” 

I paused, and I could feel the dull sense of dread building in my stomach, gnawing at my chest. And I could feel the way that Phil didn’t want to meet my eyes, like he was scared of them. 

“What’s going on?” I asked. “If something happened– you can tell me, okay? I won’t care.” 

He bit his lip, shook his head. “Can we just pretend for a little?” he asked. “Can we just be together for a few minutes? Be something good again? Please, I– I just need someone who doesn’t hate me.”

His eyes met mine, and I was falling again. 

“Yeah,” I said finally. “Yeah, okay.”

Phil squeezed my hand, and it was a quiet thank you. 

And then we were kissing again. 

Kissing until I forgot who I was and who he was and why we were here and what we were doing and everything except for his lips. 

Kissing until I didn’t want to remember. 

And then we were soft, and he was holding me. Again, silence took root between us, but it was comfortable. His breath was warm, and light was leaking out of his skin. It was hard to tell where he stopped and where I began. 

A few minutes later, the overhead speakers crackled to life, and the rest of the world caught up with us.

“Could Phil Lester come to the main office, please?”

Phil smiled, but his eyes were too bright. He leaned his head on my shoulder, his hands still holding onto mine. “I’d better go,” he said after a moment. 

He kissed me again, then stood up. He slung his bag over his shoulder, his movements slow and content. 

“I love you,” he said, and he smiled at me. 

And I was dissolving. 

Then he shut the door behind him, and I was left alone.

My arms were left to hold where his arms used to be, my lungs were left to breathe in empty air, and my heart was left to pump empty blood. 

The sun was shining, but all the flowers were dead. 

-

By the time I got to the principal's office, Damien and Spencer were already waiting outside. Both of them looked sorely out of place, their hands stuffed into their pockets. 

Neither of them said anything after I showed up. 

And then I noticed, the way that both of them were pale with worry. And the way that both of them were dead quiet. 

“Is he okay?” I asked, my voice catching. 

Spencer shrugged. “His dad showed up a few minutes ago.”

And so the three of us stood there, helplessly watching the door to the principal’s office. I felt my legs sinking into the floor, as the minutes ticked by, as the ice settled over us. 

And then:

The door opened, and Phil slipped out. His hands were hanging limply at his sides, his eyes dull. He was followed out by a man– who I assumed was his dad. He was the same height as Phil, and with the same sharp blue eyes, but his hair was streaked with grey. 

Phil caught my gaze for a second, just a second, then left the school with his dad. 

My knees gave out after that, and I sank to the ground. Spencer and Damien sat down next to me. And we stayed there as the world spilled into silence.

 

Phil had been suspended for vandalism of school property. 

Apparently, he’d torn a locker off of its hinges, replaced it with another one. The air rushed out of my lungs when I figured it out. 

And it felt like the world was empty. 

All that was left was a fiery red sky, and the place where Phil Lester used to be. 

\- - -


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which phil re-evaluates

-phil-

The entire drive home, my dad was dead quiet. 

It was almost funny– I knew he was pissed off and everything, but I also knew that I wouldn’t get in trouble. 

Because he couldn’t say shit to me. 

He couldn't say shit about how I was stupid or irresponsible

I was him, after all. 

Just a younger version, with darker hair and brighter eyes. We both had that same dry, empty feeling inside. Like dead grass in late August. And we both looked for things– for people– to fill up all the cracks.

When I ripped Dan’s locker off its hinges, it was because nobody else seemed to care. And when he lost his job, it was because he was standing up for a coworker. 

But it was also so people would look at us, and think that we were more than just two fucked up guys. 

So that maybe, one day, one of those asshole from school would be having dinner with their family. And they’d be eating their dessert, and talking about their day at work, and they’d suddenly remember my name and what I did for Dan. And then they’d smile, and they’d speak well of me to their family. 

Like somehow, the memory of me could fix all the stupid fucked up things I’d done. 

And even if people only remembered the stupid fucked up things– at least I was being remembered. 

It was then that I understood: my dad and I were too in love with burning up to be destined for anything other than loneliness. 

-

We were sitting across from each other at our shitty living room table, eating leftover pizza he’d found in the back of the fridge. 

“Hey,” he said, finally. 

“What?”

He screwed up his face a bit, and rake his hands through his hair. “You know that– you know you shouldn’t do these things, right?”

“I know.”

“It won’t get you anywhere. Pissing people off for the hell of it, it doesn’t pay–”

“I know, Dad,” I almost shouted. 

And we became quiet again. When he looked at me, he saw a mirror. The problem was, he didn’t recognise the reflection. And he didn’t remember how to talk to me. “I know that she took a lot out of us when she left,” he said. 

I looked at him, and my eyes hardened. “You take a lot out of me now.”

He stared at me. There was a pause, and then his voice got soft and raw. 

“You know that I love you, right?”

I shrugged, and he mumbled something about going to get some air. 

And I just stared at him, and watched as he headed for the door. He tripped over the carpet, swore, and grabbed his jacket. And after he was gone, I kind of noticed how bad things were for the first time. 

-

I didn’t move a muscle from my spot at the kitchen table all night. 

He didn’t even look my way when he came back in. 

After he was asleep, I went upstairs and I called my mom, even though she’d stopped calling months ago. 

I told her about how he’d lost his job and how we didn’t have hot water and how I’d been suspended and how he didn’t care because he was low again. And I told her about how I heard him pacing at three in the morning every night, and how I always stayed up with him because I was too worried to shut my eyes, because what if he did something. 

And I made her promise that she’d do something this time. 

Then, I grabbed the bag I packed 4 months ago. And I grabbed all the money I had stashed in my closet. And then I went out to my car, and I stuffed the trunk full of books and everything I could think to pack. 

And I turned the speakers up and blasted music so loud I couldn’t think. 

And I drove. God, I drove. 

I almost wished that I’d left some kind of note behind– asking if I’d ever actually done anything wrong. 

I drove until my vision was blurring and running, and the world was running away from me. 

\- - -


	19. Chapter 19

-dan-

Technically speaking, it was only a three-day suspension. 

Phil was supposed to get back by Tuesday. 

That morning, I stood by the front doors, craning my neck, waiting to catch a glimpse of him. 

I stood there, watching, until a teacher saw me and told me to go to class. 

I looked at the clock, and black started to seep into my vision. 

Because he never actually came back. 

Later that day, Amelia laughed and told me I was silly– told me that Phil disappeared all the time, so I shouldn’t worry. She told me that he’d be back in a few days and then we’d all go get ice cream together. 

And I nodded along, and I could imagine him so freaking clearly: walking back in on Friday morning, his hair rumpled and his eyes like glass. He’d laugh and say, “Sorry I was gone. I had to take care of some shit. You look adorable.” 

And then I would get mad at him and he’d kiss me and I’d forget. And then things would melt back into normal, and we would hold hands and laugh about how silly I was. 

So I smiled at her, and I said thanks, and I walked home feeling okay. 

And I fell asleep feeling okay. 

And I didn’t think about it again, until it was a week and a half later and he was still gone.

And then I realized that I was a fucking idiot.


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which dan and damien get to know each other

-dan-

Over the years, my dad had bailed on me a few times, from missed birthdays to postponed movies. But he’d never left me waiting in a parking lot before. 

The night was cool and damp, the clouds hanging low in the sky, like they were about to crash into the earth. I was sitting cross-legged on the pavement, my phone clutched in my hands, trying to decide who to call if he never showed up to get me. 

My mom wouldn’t be home until late that night, Spencer and Amelia were seeing a concert together, and Phil’s phone had been going straight to voicemail since he’d left. 

I ended up calling the only person I knew who I thought might answer. My fingers were shaking as I dialed. 

“Hi, Damien,” I said quietly. “Sorry to, um, bother you– where are you right now?”

“Just got off work.”

My voice caught a little. I swallowed. “Listen, I was just wondering if . . . Could you give me a ride? I’m at the plaza off Aberdeen and it’s too far to walk to the bus stop. I wouldn’t have called you, but–”

There was a pause, and I thought I heard him laugh. “I’ll be there in like twenty minutes.”

Then he hung up. 

-

When Damien’s car finally pulled up, I didn’t know if I was more relieved or terrified. 

It wasn’t like he’d actually done anything to me since the beginning of the year, but we also hadn’t really been alone since then. And it was hard to forget that he could still beat the shit out of me if he wanted to. Hell, he could probably hold up the sky with his fingertips if he put his mind to it. 

I was sitting awkwardly in his passenger seat, my eyes trained on the floor in front of me. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest, I could feel the way he was watching me out of the corner of his eye. 

“Were you stood up by a date or something?” he asked finally, as he pulled out of the lot. 

“Stood up by my dad.”

“Ouch,” he said. 

I drummed my fingers on my legs, trying to think of something, anything, to say to him. But he was Damien freaking Sedcole, after all. A senior who had nothing in common with me, and who wanted nothing to do with me. 

I leaned back in my seat, and we drove through the city in silence, the lights around us glittering and laughing in the dark. 

“Hey,” I said, when he drove past the turn that lead to my house. “You’re going the wrong way.”

He tapped his hands on the steering wheel, and he blew out a breath. “Actually, I was thinking I could show you something first, if that’s okay.”

I looked at him carefully, but his eyes were still trained firmly on the road. 

If that’s okay. 

“That’s fine,” I said softly. 

I was surprised by the hope rustling it’s wings in my chest. 

He was still Damien, after all. And maybe he’d let me down again, maybe he’d be cruel, maybe he still hated me just as much as before. 

But deep down, glimmering inside me, was the fleeting idea that he might not. 

-

We drove quietly for a few more miles, the city giving way to smaller and smaller roads. Right when we were in the middle of nowhere, Damien pulled over, and got out of the car. 

I followed him as he lead me away from the road, and towards an ancient looking park bench, lost in long grass. It was old, and rusty, and overlooking a farmer’s field. The two of us stared at it for a minute, unmoving and dead quiet. 

“Phil showed me this place,” Damien said finally. “We used to come here a lot.”

Then he sat down on the bench, and I sat down next to him. He pulled a bottle of something out of his jacket, and I watched as he took a sip. 

“You drink?” he asked, holding the bottle out to me. 

I nodded quickly, and grabbed it out of his hands. It tasted horrible and felt good. 

If it was anyone else– even Phil– I would have said no. But the idea of being lonely with Damien . . . It was what I needed. We passed the bottle back and forth, watching as the world went black.

“I’m sorry for being an asshole,” he said after a minute. 

“Sure.”

“I never meant to make you miserable,” Damien said, and it surprised me how raw his voice was. “I think I was worried about losing him to you . . . Which sounds stupid now, I guess.”

Usually, Damien was the kind of guy who seemed like he could hold up the sky with his fingertips. But when I glanced over at him, he looked smaller than I’d ever seen before– like he was collapsing in on himself. 

“It’s okay,” I said quietly. 

And then we were bleeding together, alone together, quiet together. And Phil was all around us. 

“I always thought I’d make things better for him,” I said, mostly to myself, and barely louder than a whisper. “We were supposed to be good together.”

“You are good together.”

I swallowed. 

“I thought I could change him.”

Damien laughed a little, his voice bitter and tired. I wondered how much he’d been coming to this bench lately– I wondered if he’d come back without me. 

“I didn’t think I’d miss him this much,” Damien admitted. “I thought I might even be relieved but . . . I just feel like a pair of worn-out jeans without him.”

“Jeans?”

“Like I’m not even made of enough fabric to be stitched together again.”

“You are out of your mind,” I said. And after a moment, I started laughing. 

And then he did, too– and it wasn’t bitter anymore– and things were easy between us. 

“I never thought I’d be talking to you like this,” he said quietly. 

I opened my eyes again, looked over at Damien, and he was something that I’d never seen before. 

When he spoke, I could close my eyes and see Phil’s fingerprints on his words. When he spoke, Phil was right there with us, because the two of them were practically the same person. And when he spoke, Phil felt so close that I could almost feel him, that I could almost reach him, that I could almost catch him. 

“I never thought that I’d be looking at you like this,” I said.

And then I leaned over, and I kissed him. 

Damien was sickly sweet like sunshine, the kind of guy you saw of the front of a faded postcard, with hair so fucking blond and eyes so fucking green. He was broad and strong and I got the feeling that there was more of him left than he let on. And for that second– that moment– I wasn’t seeing colours, I wasn’t seeing Phil, I wasn’t seeing anything at all. 

“Shit,” he said, as he shoved me off. “What the fuck are you doing?”

My ears were roaring, and then everything went quiet. I slid off the bench, then scrambled backwards in the grass, because I’d never seen Damien that pissed.

“Sorry,” I said, mostly to myself. I tugged my knees up to my chest. “Sorry, god, I’m so fucking sorry. With everything going on– I’m not thinking right, I didn’t, I shouldn’t have, I–”

“Shut up,” Damien said quietly. 

I nodded, and stared at my hands. I felt my chest crumpling up. 

“I mean, obviously don’t try to kiss me again, for fuck’s sake,” he added, as he put the cap back on the bottle and stuffed it in his jacket. “But you don’t have to keep apologizing.”

He sat down across from me in the grass, and looked up at the sky instead of at my face. 

“I miss him too, Dan.”

\- - -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the hiatus. I'm trying to write more regularly, and another update is planned for this coming tuesday
> 
> btw, what did you think?


	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Damien has time to think

-damien-

From the moment I first met Dan– and even in the moments before then– I hated how easy he had things.

He was the kid who had his shit together, the kid who got top marks without trying, the kid who was in half of my classes even though I was two years older than him.

He was the kid who caught Phil’s eye, he was the kid who– according to Phil– picked flowers instead of arguments, he was the kid who didn’t make mistakes. Maybe that was why I resented him so much . . . Even in the days before the two of them met, Phil spoke about Dan like he put the fucking stars in the sky.

It wasn't until the minutes after Dan kissed me, when he sat motionless in the grass, terrified of what he’d done, that I saw how close to breaking he was.

He was, after all, just a kid.

He’d kissed me because I reminded him so much of Phil, probably– but also because I was there. He’d kissed me because he was unraveling at the seams, and because he had nothing left to lose.

“So, Dan,” I said, awkwardly. “Are you ready to go back yet?”

Dan just shook his head, and rested his chin on his knees, which were drawn up to his chest. The night was starting to get cold, and even though the wind was making Dan shiver, he didn’t seem to notice.

“Amelia said that Phil’s done this before,” Dan mumbled, mostly to himself.

I shook my head. “Not really. I mean, he usually ends up at my place.”

Dan stared at the sky for a moment, his eyes empty and dull. “What happens if he doesn’t come back this time?” he asked, frantically. He turned away from me, his hands shaking, his breathing shallow. “What if he’s just gone and that’s it?”

I opened my mouth to reply, and was surprised to find that I didn’t have an answer.

All night, even after I dropped Dan off at his place, I couldn’t get that stupid sentence out of my head:

What if he’s just gone and that’s it?

I wasn’t sure what would happen if he didn’t come back. Hell, I wasn’t sure if the earth would keep spinning, if the stars would keep shining, without him.

-

The next morning, on my way to school, I found myself driving the wrong way.

I was heading out of the nice subdivisions, towards to shittier parts of town, to where the houses were all jumbled and shoved together, crowding for space. When I found myself staring at Phil’s house, found myself walking up to the door, I felt very close to crying.

After I knocked, the door was opened by a woman who I didn’t recognize. She was tall and skinny, her too-blonde hair streaked with grey, and her too-bright sundress looking wrinkled.

“Hello,” she said, her voice sickly sweet.

“Hey,” I said, and then I paused. There was something in her face– something behind her eyes– that was suddenly familiar to me. “Are you . . . Are you Phil’s mom, by chance?”

She gave a tight nod, her lips pursed. “Can I help you with something?”

“I was looking for Phil, actually.”

“He isn’t living here right now.”

“Have you heard from him, at least?”

“I stopped by about a week ago, to help out with Phil’s dad,” she said, her attitude suddenly professional. “From what I understand, Phil didn’t want anything to do with me. He was gone by the time I arrived.”

“Oh,” I said, trying to sound casual. “And you know this how?”

“He left me a postcard.”

“Can I see it?”

Again, she frowned, her hand still resting on the door handle. “What did you say your name was?”

“Damien.”

“Damien,” she echoed, and the ghost of a smile flickered over her face. “Of course. I remember when you used to come over practically every weekend, back before . . . Well, before things got more complicated.”

Complicated. I almost scoffed. Nothing complicated about you leaving Phil and his dad in the middle of the night and never coming back.

Before she left, she used to make cookies for Phil and I every time we hung out. Even though it was the same tiny, shabby house she moved into when Phil was born, she was always trying to decorate the backyard or redesign the living room to make the house look like something from a magazine. 

It never worked.

I remembered the night when Phil and I overheard his dad telling her to stop pretending things would get better, I remembered when she stopped wearing those sundresses everywhere because nobody noticed them. Most of all, I remembered our freshman year when Phil started asking if we could hang out at my place instead of his, and when I asked why he just said, “There won’t be anyone to make us cookies anymore.”

It was the same year that Phil started lighting matches. He never used them for anything, he just liked to watch them burn and burn until they burned his fingers.

I would shout at him to blow them out, to drop them, but he never did. Secretly, I always thought he just lit them on fire so he could watch something burn other than his home, his parents, his life.

With a start, I looked up at Phil’s mom, and realized she was staring.

“I remember that, too,” I managed to say.

Then she turned to walk inside, and gestured for me to follow her. We walked into the kitchen together, and I sat at the table as she poured me a glass of lemonade.

The kitchen looked neater than it had for awhile– probably since before she moved out. There were vases of flowers everywhere and a frilly tablecloth with white lace. None of them hid how small and shabby the kitchen was, none of them made her look any less out of place.

After rummaging in a draw for nearly a minute, she pulled out a cheap looking postcard and handed it to me.

“Here you go,” she said, her voice strangely small. 

'Mom,  
Please don’t leave until you know dad will be safe.  
And as thankful as I am, this doesn’t change anything between us.  
I’ll be out of the house until this blows over.  
-Phil'

I read the card a few times, then turned it over in my hands. My heart nearly skipped a beat when I saw the fine white writing on the front, reading ‘Douglas Fir Youth Hostel’.

“He’s still in town,” I said, and for the first time, I felt the tug of possibility in my chest.

-

I’d been dealing with Phil– and all of his nonsense– since I’d first met him.

For Phil, falling without a parachute wasn’t occasional. It wasn’t something he saved for the weekends, it wasn’t a treat, it was an always.

Maybe that was why I drove so damn fast after I figured out where he was staying. Maybe that was why my voice sounded that desperate when I was talking to the lady at the front desk of the youth hostel, maybe that was why I knocked on his door so hard I thought my bones might break.

Because someday, he would fall too fast, and nobody would be able to keep him from hitting the ground.

Phil opened the door after I’d been knocking for nearly a minute. He was looking tired and drawn, his eyes dark and his hair a mess. His face crumpled a little when he saw me, almost like he was sorry.

“What do you want, Damien?” he asked, his voice thin.

I felt raw and splintered, like something inside me had torn loose.

“Fuck off,” I said, and I pushed my way through the door to give him a fierce hug. “I thought you were dead or something, you asshole.”

Phil shrugged me off after a moment, looking embarrassed, and ran a hand through his hair. “I was going to call you.”

“Sure,” I said.

I sat down on the corner of Phil’s tiny bed, my hands trailing on the plain white sheets. His room at the hostel was just as barren as the one at his house. Other than the bed, there was a small table, a dresser, and a box of books in the corner.

“I’m sorry,” Phil said quietly, looking at me for the first time.

Part of me wanted to shout at him, wanted to demand an explanation, a story, something. Instead, I just shrugged, my eyes going soft.

“It’s fine,” I said, even though it wasn’t. “I’m just glad you’re alright.”

Because that was the way it worked, when you were close to Phil.

At the end of the day, he could have said anything and I would have eaten it up. Because he was my best fucking friend in the world, and I was just glad to hear his voice, just glad he was still alive, just glad he hadn’t hit the ground yet.

\- - -


	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Dan and Phil finally talk

-dan-

Twenty minutes after Damien called me, I showed up at the hostel where Phil was supposed to be staying. 

The night was soft and warm, the moon was a smudge behind thin clouds.

I peered in through the glass door, and saw the woman at the front desk. I thought about going in, I thought about asking her what room he might be in. I wondered if I was even ready to see him . . . and that was when I noticed.

It started with long legs sprawled on the ground, a lanky torso in a baggy sweater, a head of tousled black hair leaning up against the brick wall of the building. Fingers tapping the ground, eyes pressed shut.

It was Phil freaking Lester; alive, alive, alive.

Phil’s chest was heaving, the way it sometimes did after fights. I stood there for a moment, just watching him. It felt like my head had been thrust underwater, like the rest of the world had been blocked out.

I didn’t know what to say, I didn’t know how to start.

When I walked over and sat down a few feet in front of him, Phil didn’t look up. We waited, both painfully aware of each other, and the world was silent aside from the punctuation of our breathing. There was a space between us– miles and miles and miles– where there used to be nothing.

“Do you not . . .” I hesitated for a moment, then continued, softly, “Did I do something wrong?”

Then Phil’s eyes flickered open, and he still didn’t say anything. He was watching me carefully, wearing an expression I couldn’t place. His eyes were wide and dark and clear, pupils dilated. His hair was messy, his cheeks were flushed, his lips red and slightly parted.

“This isn’t about you,” he said, with lips so red against his pale skin.

“So what’s it about?”

Phil reached his hand towards mine. As he caught my wrist, my breath caught in my throat. Because it was the first time that he touched me since that day we were together in the classroom, the last day before he left, the last day before the world ended.

His fingers trailed over the back of my hand lightly as he spoke. “My dad isn’t doing well,” he said slowly. “My mom came to help– I didn’t want to see her.”

“And you forgot about me when you left?” I asked, my chin jutting forward. “You couldn’t call me?”

Phil acted like he didn’t hear me, his fingers still dusting my hand, his eyes still planted on the ground. “I left because I didn’t want to watch my dad kill himself,” he said, voice flat. “I wasn’t planning on leaving, I just . . . I needed time to think about things.”

“What things?”

I could feel his hand shaking on top of mine, a tremor that came from quiet fear, otherwise unable to escape. “I’m him,” Phil said quietly. “My dad– I’m him. We’re the same.”

“Don’t say that,” I said, and I hated how young I sounded, my voice small and shaky. “You aren’t like him.”

Phil just blew out a breath, then he looked up at the sky, his eyes bright and clashing. I squeezed his hand, and I wanted things to go back to the way they were. I wanted him to go back to being loud and confident, a boy under bleachers, someone who knew all the answers.

“Don’t lie for me.” Phil’s voice was practically a whisper. “This is what I am. It’s not gonna get better.”

“You aren’t like him,” I repeated because it was all I could say.

“You should leave,” he said. “I’m sorry that I didn’t call, but you should really leave.”

He spoke quietly, ferociously. Because he was the sort of creature that crawled up from the dark spaces people didn’t like to look, the kind of creature that learned to speak in the cracks of a sidewalk, the kind of creature that grew up thinking dandelions weren’t weeds.

This is what I am.

The bags under his eyes shone blue under the flickering light overhead, and I wanted nothing more than to make things better for him. And he wanted nothing more to do with me.

“Did you think about me at all?” I asked.

“Couldn't stop.”

“I love you,” I said, and I leaned closer to him.

We kissed, and he tasted sickly sweet, tasted of blood and spoiled fruit.

We kissed, but it was a wretched, ugly thing.

We kissed, but there was no romance, only empty hunger.

“You should really go,” he said, and his hand was flat on my chest, pushing me away. And I could see it clearly then, the way he stood on the edge of the world with his arms pulled above his head and his shoelaces untied.

I used to admire that beautiful, reckless side of him.

But that night, with his hungry red lips and apathetic eyes, I couldn’t tell anymore if he wanted to be pulled back from the edge, or if he just wanted someone to see it when he finally fell.

\- - -


	23. Chapter 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which flowers stop being beautiful

-dan-

When I got home, it started with the dried daisies. 

Phil had given them to me months ago, back before we were anything. 

I stood quietly for a moment, the hurt in my chest filling the whole room, and then I pulled the daisies down from the wall. They were fragile in my hands, soft and trusting. Then I ripped them apart, and let the crushed petals flutter from my fingers like snow. 

I played our fight over and over in my head. Over and over and over. 

I played over all the things I could have said to him, all the things I could have done differently. 

And then it was the roses hanging above my window, ripped to shreds, crushed beneath my hungry aching fingers. And then it was the lilacs I’d framed, and then it was the sunflowers, and then it was more daisies. I didn’t stop until all of the stupid flowers were destroyed because what was the point of flowers now? What was the point of colours or songs or the sky, what was the point of anything? 

Because Phil didn’t want anything more to do with me. 

Because I was just a stupid kid who couldn’t fix things. 

I sat on the ground, surrounded by broken glass and dead flowers. 

Did you think about me at all?

Couldn't stop.

And then I was remembering the way he kissed me, the way his hungry red lips found mine, the way his hands were clinging to me until he used them to push me away. 

And then I was remembering the way I watched him shake, watched his hands tremble. There were sparks in the air, but they were being drawn towards him. The explosion was happening on the inside, and the rest of the world was collapsing in on him.

I love you.

You should really go.

I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

I felt a gaping hole inside of me, waiting, pulling, clawing, tugging, eating at me. I knew it wouldn’t stop until there was nothing left of me, but I couldn’t fight it because how the hell do you fight a feeling in your chest?

I wanted it to be morning again, I wanted to get there without sleeping. 

I wanted all of the noise to stop I wanted it to be quiet again I wanted him to hold me and say my name like it was some precious word I wanted him to be safe and okay I wanted to be stupid and happy and in love again.

\- - -


	24. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which phil faces up to a few things

-phil-

I stayed in the hostel for another two weeks before I ran out of money.

It was raining the day I left. Rain that smelled of spring– the first whisper of warmer weather. 

Maybe, if I was a braver person, I might have tried living in my car before of going back. And maybe, if I wasn’t so damn tired, I might have found a way to keep running from everyone. I might have found a way to keep my chin up, my eyes open. 

As I slipped into my car, I felt a familiar burn in the back of my throat. It was a thick, heavy feeling, seeping up from the ache in my chest. 

And maybe, if I was older, I might have cried less. 

I drove through the city, right into the bad part of town; my part of town. I could feel all of the fire– all of the strength I’d pretended to have– slipping out of me, spilling out the car window as I drove towards my house. The cracked bricks and the overgrown lawns were waiting for me when I got there. 

A few pathetic stars swam in the murky black above me. 

Then I knocked on the door, and rested my hand on the peeling paint. It felt strange, standing on my doorstep again. When I’d left, I hadn’t been planning on coming home. 

The door opened up a crack. 

“Phil?” she asked, looking just as faded as the damn sky. 

Blonde hair, blue eyes like mine. She wasn’t smiling, wasn’t even trying to. Her hand was shaking where it rested on the door frame, like she was scared of something. 

“Mom.”

“Would you like to come in for some tea?” she asked me, just like she’d ask a stranger. 

“Sure,” I said softly, my voice catching. 

-

Late afternoon sun filtered through the blinds, as the two of us sat together in the kitchen. We were crammed around the tiny table, each of us holding a mug of tea. For a minute, it felt exactly like before she left. 

The two of us were close back then. She used to call me her prince, she used to look at me like I was some kind of miracle– her miracle– instead of a mess to be cleaned up. 

Even when I was little, I knew that my mom was going to leave my dad eventually. 

But I always thought she’d bring me with her when she did. 

“How is he?” I asked finally.

“Fine,” she said. “Better.”

And I kind of hated how relieved I was. How grateful I was that nothing happened, that she showed up when I couldn’t, that he was going to be okay for another few months. 

“How are you?” she prodded, like she used to.

I shrugged.

She started to say something, then stopped, then reached her hand across the table towards mine, then pulled it away again. “I still care about you, you know.”

I blew out a breath, and scratched the back of my neck. “How long until you leave?” I asked quietly. 

“Another week,” she said. “Maybe two. You’re free to move back–”

I shook my head. “You’ve made it clear that you don’t want me in your life.”

Mom looked away, and for a second I thought I might have actually hurt her feelings. Her tired eyes brushed across mine. “I couldn’t take you with me, Phil,” she said. 

“I know.”

“I wanted to take you.” Again, she reached her hand out, and this time her fingers brushed across the corner of my sleeve. “I really wanted to take you.”

“No, you didn’t,” I said, and I pulled my arm away. 

“It wasn’t easy, Phil,” she replied, and I heard something crack in her voice.

I looked at her closely, watched her lip tremble. And god, I wanted to ask her all of those stupid questions that kept me up late at night. I wanted to ask her if leaving was worth it. I wanted to ask her if I ever actually did anything wrong, or if being his son was enough of a reason. 

Instead, I asked, “What do you want from me?”

“I want better things for you,” she said softly, glancing around the room. “I want you to do better than . . . than all this.”

I stood up, I poured the rest of my tea down the sink. 

“Are you leaving?” she asked quietly. 

“I can’t stay here. Not with you around.”

“Phil.”

“I’m not mad. You made your choice and that’s fine, but I can’t be around you anymore.”

She knitted her eyebrows together. “So you’re leaving, then?”

“Just for a little.” I paused for a second, then looked at her again. “I’ll come back when you’re gone– when he needs me again.”

She nodded, and for a second she looked like she was going to hug me or something. In the end, she just brushed her hand against my shoulder. 

And it was enough. 

-

It was past midnight when I got to Dan’s house and knocked on his door. I’d been rehearsing what I wanted to say to him countless times, but when he opened the door, the words got caught in my throat. 

Because Dan was standing there, unmoving, and it felt like the first time I’d met him all over again. It was a tug in my chest, one that came with not wanting to be a lost cause anymore. 

It was a burst of adrenaline. 

And, more than anything, it was the sudden belief that there really was magic in the world, after all. 

\- - -


	25. Chapter 25

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which some loose ends are tied up.

-dan-

When I opened the front door, Phil was standing there, looking both lonely and human.

"Dan," he said, softly.

His chin was jutting forwards, his head held high. He wasn't looking at me, but through me, like he couldn't bear to meet my gaze. His breaths were ragged in his throat, his lips trembling, eyes damp with tears that wouldn't spill.

"I don't know who I am," he said.

I stared at him, stunned.

And then Phil freaking Lester– the boy who didn't need a parachute– he fell forwards, suddenly fragile. He fell into me and I held onto him tighter than anything.

"I don't know who I am," he repeated. There was desperation in the way his hands were clinging to the fabric of my shirt, his shoulders shaking slightly. He was crying, he was leaning on me, he was crying like he wouldn't stop.

"I don't want to turn into my dad," he said. "But I also don't . . . I don't know what I'm supposed to be."

For a moment, I could feel it tangibly– the weight of the silence between us.

"The two of us," he said, finally. "Are we still . . . anything?"

I could feel something opening up inside me, unfolding like a flower. At the same time, I could feel it, an emptiness, chewing at my insides, below my ribs.

"I just– I hope you still want to, is all. After everything," he said clumsily, shyer than I'd heard in months. "I know that I'm difficult sometimes, and if you don't–"

I kissed him, though, before he could finish

We kissed, because he was a boy and I was a boy and god– I loved him.

I loved him.

Then I pulled him in closer, tighter, and for what felt like hours, we existed quietly in the home of the streetlights. The night was cool and foggy around us, we existed in the home of each other, his head resting on my shoulder.

-

"Where did the flowers go?" Phil asked softly, as he walked into my room.

I shrugged. "I didn't want to look at them anymore."

I hadn't really thought about the flowers since I'd thrown them out– and that had been weeks ago. Since then, my room had remained barred: scrubbed white walls, an empty bookshelf, a desk.

Phil looked around, smiled a little. "I probably shouldn't have brought you this, then," he said, tugging a crumpled daisy from his jacket pocket.

"No, it's–" I hesitated, grabbed the flower. It practically crumbled in my hands. "Thanks."

Phil crammed his hands into his pockets, he stared at the ground. "Thanks for letting me stay here tonight," he said quietly. "You sure your parents won't mind?"

"They won't notice," I said.

I sat down on the corner of the bed, and Phil looked out my window– the same one he'd crawled through, once, forever ago. I missed him, almost: that boy I'd met a million years ago. He seemed far away now, the person he used to be.

I asked, "When are you going to go back?"

Phil shrugged, and flopped down on the bed next to me, his black hair brushing across the white sheets. It was getting long again, he had to keep brushing it out of his eyes.

"I might see if I can stay with Damien for a little bit," he said, finally. "You know. Until things blow over."

From the outside, I could hear my parents arguing. Their voices were soft, but I could hear it: the knifepoint of tension between them. They hadn't noticed when we slipped inside. I was funny, almost, how little and how much Phil knew about me, about all the little things that happened inside. For now, at least, he seemed to know the important things without asking.

-

We didn't talk much after we turned the lights out. I couldn't sleep that night, maybe because of our legs tangling under the blankets, maybe because of the flowers spilling out of my head. 

"Dan," Phil said, quietly. His voice was scratchy and almost silent, inches above a whisper.

"I thought you were asleep."

He rolled over to face me, his hand traced along my collar bones. "I can't stop thinking about you," he said.

I felt my cheeks go red, and leaned in closer.

Closer, closer, I leaned in and he leaned in and–

It was fumbly at first, my fingers stretching out to meet him, his lips finding my neck, his lips and my lips and the skin, the miles of skin. He was good at this sort of thing, I could tell. His hand met the small of my back and pulled me in closer, and were flush up against each other, and–

Then I felt myself squirming away.

Phil went still a second later, rolled onto his back.

He said, "Sorry." Then, "Are you okay?"

I nodded, because I was, really, it was all just a little strange. The titles and proclamations of love and the feeling of his hand brushing up against my skin. "I don't– I don't know what I'm doing," I said. "I don't want to do anything wrong, I don't know–"

"I get it," Phil said quietly. "It's not always easy for me either."

"You've done this before," I protested. "You–"

"I've done this before," he agreed. "But it's not– those times don't count for me. Not like this."

I stared up at the ceiling, looking everywhere except for where I wanted to. And for the first time I could feel it – really feel it. That we were different people now. We were different people now, and things were different between us, maybe. It was that unfamiliar feeling that came from being close to someone, but not knowing when you got there.

"What do you mean they don't count?"

He shrugged. I could feel his grin in the air before I heard it in his voice. "They weren't you."

The world was quiet for us, for a second. Then I reached out again, and my hands tangled with his shirt, and I wasn't scared anymore. It was all his breathing, and the flowers that seemed to grow in the spaces between us, and the fire that was caught in the pit of my stomach. We were nowhere else in the world except with each other, we were gone, we were everywhere.

\- - -


	26. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the end, baby

-dan-

It was the end.

The end of an era, at the very least.

I could feel change swirling around all of us. I could feel possibilities– good and bad– grabbing at our heels, waiting to pull us into the rest of our lives.

Phil pretended that he could drive faster than the world could transform, but really, this was the end of things.

They'd graduated. Phil was taking a gap year. So were Spencer and Amelia– they were going traveling together, now that they were dating. Damien was going straight to university, and I had two years of high school left.

But in the meantime, the five of us sped down the road, driving out to some farm that was owned by Amelia's cousin, driving past all the old memories stacked up on the pavement.

When we climbed out of the car, the day was soft and pale around us, the sky was hazy from the smoke of a nearby forest fire. We were in the absolute, brilliant, middle of nowhere.

"What are we doing here, exactly?" I asked.

Phil smiled at me, his hand resting on the small of my back. "This is sort of a tradition," he replied. "We come here every year when school ends."

So I walked behind the group, and saw the huge blue silo they were approaching, saw the way it cut into the sky. We walked around to the back, and I saw the ladder that went up the side of it, right to the roof– there was a silver cage that wrapped around it, making it look like a tunnel to the sky, almost.

"No way," I said, shaking my head. "I'm not climbing that thing."

"No pressure," Phil said. "But it's not that scary. It's a sturdy ladder, and there are a few benches at the top - there's a great view."

"No way," I repeated, and I sat down in the grass.

Phil just said, "Suit yourself."

And then the four of them were off, climbing up and up and up, getting smaller and smaller. I saw them all get to the top, I saw them wave down at me, and I waved back. I heard the laughs and shouts from the top, the kind that came from being young and invincible.

I sat on the grass for a moment, just watching, forever waiting.

And then I walked to the bottom of the ladder, and I looked up. I was staring up, my hand resting on the bottom rung - I was looking up through the cage, the tunnel to the sky, and I could feel my heart in my throat.

At first, it was easy, because I was only a few feet off the ground.

Even when I was high up, I wasn't scared, exactly - because even though my arms were aching and my fingers were sore and I didn't want to fall, I could hear their voices floating above me, and I could feel how I was also young and invincible and how I wasn't going to be left behind anymore.

When I reached the top – when I pulled myself up onto the flat roof of the silo – it felt like waking up for the first time in my life.

I stood still for a moment, and I almost wanted to cry, because there they were: the idiots I'd grown to love, all looking out at their futures. And then I looked over, looked at Phil freaking Lester, and he was the best part of all.

Because while everyone else was surprised that I'd made it up, Phil just looked happy.

I walked over to the bench on the top of the world, and sat down next to him. He smiled, kissed me on the cheek, and said, "What took you so long?"

There was nothing else to say after that, not really. We looked out at the sky and the ground, and it was shifting, all of it. The soft greens and blues and pinks, the flowers growing in the air. Everything around us was ending and starting and ending and starting and I was there, my heart on my sleeve, with the inexplicable feeling that I'd made it, somehow, to the good part of my life.

I was alive, alive, alive.

\- - -


End file.
